Human rights lawyer Kristina Conti pushed back against Vice President Sara Duterte’s assertion that the International Criminal Court (ICC) case against former President Rodrigo Duterte would fail due to the alleged lack of specific names of 30,000 victims.
In her Facebook post, Conti argued that such perspective oversimplifies how international courts assess crimes against humanity.
“VP Sara has an incredible platform and huge opportunity to raise the level of the discussion to more than this,” Conti stated. “But this is a simplistic view that will convince many, but unfortunately, will not convince the court.”
To reinforce her argument, Conti cited ICC rulings, particularly in the cases of Prosecutor v. Bemba (2016) and Prosecutor v. Ntaganda (2019), which established that “widespread” attacks are not solely determined by victim identification but by the large-scale nature, frequency, and systematic targeting of civilians.
Conti also referenced the case of Jean Paul Akayesu from Rwanda, where a conviction for crimes against humanity was secured even though only three specific murders were directly linked to the accused, demonstrating that courts consider broader patterns of violence.
“I had expected Rodrigo Duterte’s defense to be more sophisticated and sagacious, considering the amount of money their camp is spending on lawyers,” said Conti, an Assistant to Counsel at the ICC.
She also called for sharper legal and political discourse from Duterte supporters and the Vice President, who is a lawyer herself.
VP Duterte has questioned the widely cited figure of 30,000 drug war deaths, saying that the 181 pieces of evidence the prosecution presented to the ICC fall short of proving the scale of alleged extrajudicial killings during former President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.
Police records showed that drug war deaths totaled about 6,000, while human rights groups claimed that the death toll—including vigilante killings—could be as high as 30,000.