A few bags of chips and sweets line the modest storefront of Salvacion Ramos’ home in the Batasan neighborhood on the outskirts of Manila. At 68, she has turned the front of her house into a small convenience store to help pay for the education of her grandson, who has been in her care since her daughter’s death.
It was on that same doorstep one night in February 2017 that Cristeta Ramos was shot once in the back and three times in the head by four plainclothes police officers. “She died in my arms. I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Salvacion recalls, tears in her eyes.
Beside her, her friend and neighbor Llore Pasco is also mourning her children. Her two sons, Cristanto and Juan Carlos, 34 and 31, were killed during a police operation as they were on their way to work in May 2017. “The police say they chased them because they thought they were thieves, but the bullet wounds were on the front of their bodies,” Llore says. She is now raising her five grandchildren.
“Cristeta was not a criminal” Salvacion says. “She did take drugs with the people she was with, but she wanted to get better. The barangay [neighborhood-level community] was offering a program for drug users to seek treatment, so I gave them her name.”
Llore’s sons had stopped using drugs well before Duterte’s election. After he took office, local officials insisted that former drug users register, presenting the process as a simple verification. Her sons initially refused. Llore eventually convinced them. They had been sober for more than a year. “Today I keep thinking that if they had not gone there, they might still be alive,” she says.
In neighborhoods across the country, barangays began compiling “watch lists” of current and former drug users. For some residents, getting off those lists came at a price. “At least five families I know paid 10,000 pesos (about $180) to the local government to get their names removed from the list, and their children are still alive,” Salvacion says.
Under Duterte, the war on drugs also became a source of income for some local actors. Along with the grief of losing their children and the guilt of having registered them with local authorities came the burden of paying to recover their bodies from the morgue. In Salvacion and Llore’s cases, authorities initially demanded 120,000 pesos and later 70,000 pesos, or about $1,350, after the intervention of the NGO Rise Up for Life and For Rights.
“Duterte destroyed these families, and now these mothers have to keep working to raise their orphaned grandchildren,” says Leah Valencia, a coordinator with the organization, which supports families in their search for justice.
Rise Up for Life and For Rights has also passed their testimonies to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, where Duterte has been held since his arrest in March 2025. The case accuses Duterte of crimes against humanity committed between 2011 and 2019, during his time as mayor of Davao City and later as president. Prosecutors have identified 78 victims in the incidents specifically detailed in the case: 76 alleged murders and two attempted murders. The figure does not represent the total number of deaths attributed to Duterte’s drug war, but a selection of incidents presented by prosecutors to establish the alleged crimes against humanity.
The historic trial is scheduled to begin on November 30.
If Duterte is found guilty of crimes against humanity, he would become the first former president convicted by the ICC.
“The ICC is a very small ray of hope, but we are asking the government to turn Bato over and open an investigation to prosecute all those responsible,” Salvacion Ramos and Llore Pasco say together.
Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte attends a status conference at Trial Chamber III at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, Sep. 16, 2026. (Photo credit: International Criminal Court)
Duterte could soon be joined by his ally Senator Ronald dela Rosa, known as “Bato,” whom Duterte appointed chief of the Philippine National Police after he took office in 2016. In this capacity, dela Rosa oversaw the launch of “Double Barrel,” a cornerstone of the drug war that would leave about 30,000 people dead, according to estimates by several NGOs. (The official death toll of the police is around 6,000.)
On May 11, an attempt to arrest dela Rosa on a warrant for the ICC ended with him taking refuge inside the Philippine Senate as shots were fired in the building. The former police chief was placed under a form of protective custody inside the chamber before leaving the building a few days later. He is currently at large and wanted by Philippine authorities.
The fact that such chaos is possible reflects how politically sensitive the drug war remains at the highest levels of the Philippine state. In 2022, Duterte completed his single six-year term and was succeeded by Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the former dictator who ruled the country from 1965 to 1986, who was elected through an alliance with the Duterte camp. But the alliance did not last.
As relations between the two political clans deteriorated, Marcos gradually shifted his position on the International Criminal Court. In March 2024, he said the ICC had no authority to investigate the Philippines’ drug war and that his government would not cooperate with the court. Months later, as his alliance with the Dutertes unraveled, he adopted a softer stance, saying his government would not block an ICC investigation and would comply with its obligations to Interpol. By early 2025, his administration had also signaled that it was open to limited cooperation with the court.
Duterte was arrested by Philippine authorities, based on an Interpol Red Notice, at Manila’s airport on March 11, 2025.
While Marcos allowed police to enforce the ICC arrest warrant and accepted the presence of ICC investigators, he never openly opposed the drug war waged by his predecessor. He largely avoided the issue during the 2022 presidential campaign, particularly to preserve his alliance with the Duterte camp and its supporters.
He distanced himself from it only after taking office, when he promised a “bloodless” war on drugs. Joel Ariate, a social sciences researcher at the University of the Philippines and founder of the DAHAS project, which has tracked drug-war deaths since 2017, called the term “pure propaganda.”
“The Marcos government says there is no more blood being spilled. That is absurd. The drug war continues. The number of victims has dropped sharply, but there are still 200 to 300 deaths every year,” Ariate says. One-third of the victims are killed in police operations, he says, while the rest are mainly linked to private militias or hit men hired for less than $100 per killing.
Joel Ariate is one of the two academic researchers behind the “Dahas” project – the word means “violence” in Tagalog – which has documented drug-related deaths since 2017. (Photo credit: Aubin Eymard)
The decline in violence against drug users could be a sign of progress under the Marcos government, but Ariate remains pessimistic. “Those responsible for thousands of killings, particularly low-ranking police officers, are still in their jobs. The police know the details and who took part,” the researcher says.
So far, only five cases have resulted in the conviction of nine police officers for crimes linked to Duterte’s drug war, according to a report from Human Rights Watch published in June this year. Yet DAHAS has documented many other cases in which police officers themselves filmed killings and posted the footage online as trophies.
Sitting in the university library where he works, Ariate shares his main concern. “In reality, the institutions that failed during the drug war have not changed,” he says. “In two years, there will be another presidential election, and if a politician like Duterte wins, it could all start again because the mentality has not changed either.”
In May 2025, two months after his arrest and transfer to The Hague, 63 percent of registered voters surveyed by Pulse Asia said they still trusted Duterte.
“Populist leaders present themselves as defenders of order and the fight against crime,” says Christopher Magno, a criminologist specializing in political violence and co-founder of the Truth Commission. “To justify their policies, they identify a group as responsible for insecurity: immigrants in the United States under Trump, and poor people and those accused of using or trafficking drugs in the Philippines under Duterte. By identifying an ‘enemy,’ they can legitimize a repressive policy and strengthen their popularity. Duterte therefore left office with very high levels of public support.”
The Truth Commission, established in 2026, is an independent body that brings together civilian experts from different fields, including law, forensic medicine, journalism, trauma-informed care, and education. Its work centers on collecting testimonies from victims and their families, preserving their stories, and examining the institutions and practices behind the drug war.
“Our goal is to document the facts and establish a truthful account, but above all to humanize the victims and begin a process of healing through a change in mentality,” Magno says.
The commission’s work is expected to last two years and be completed before the next elections, with findings released every six months. It offers new hope to victims’ families, though they remain cautious.
“We are still observing what will happen with the Truth Commission,” Salvacion Ramos and Llore Pasco say, as if protecting themselves from another disappointment in their quest for justice in the Philippines.
Magno says that some police officers are “beginning to open up” during interviews conducted by the Truth Commission. He adds, “The national police have also supported us and say they will follow the conclusions of our commission.”
The criminologist knows the heavy responsibility facing his team: a process of truth and remembrance aimed at putting people and victims back at the center of this tragedy. There is also the challenge of having the commission’s findings recognized by everyone – from institutions to victims’ families, but above all by a divided society – so that the wound left by Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war can finally begin to heal.