PH ‘under critical moments,’ tops global impunity index

Figures and image from the Global Impunity Index.

The Philippines ranked the highest in impunity, according to the 2017 Global Impunity Index conducted by the University of the Americas Puebla and UDLAP Jenkins Graduate School.

The study was conducted among 69 countries. A total of 124 countries that are Member States of the United Nations were not included due to lack of sufficient information on security and justice.

The Philippines topped in the impunity index with 75.6 points, followed by India with 70.94 points. Other countries in the top were Cameroon, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Nicaragua, Russian Federation, Paraguay, Honduras and El Salvador.

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“The Philippines is going through one of its critical moments, due to the increase of violence related with organized crime and increased terrorist activities from local gangs linked with the Islamic State,” the GII said.

The GII said that high rates of impunity can lead to socioeconomic inequality, legal inequality, rule-of-law problems, insufficient economic development, difficulties to attract foreign investment and tourism, as well as an increase in human rights violations.

For the study, impunity was measured using two factors: the functionality of the security, and justice systems and the protections of human rights; and the structural and existing capacity of the countries analyzed in the study.

The measuring range of the three dimensions — structural, functional, and human rights, is from 0 to 100, with zero with inexistent impunity.

In terms of structural dimension, the Philippines scored 94.06 in security system, 99.07 in justice system. In terms of functional dimension, it scored 44.64 in security system and 42.22 in justice system. It received 97.99 in terms of human rights. /idl