COMMENT | According to one well-known Filipino commentator, it was just a matter of time. The prosecution of Rodrigo Duterte, the 79-year-old former president of the Philippines for mass human rights violations had already been building up since 2018.

The momentum continued even as he pulled the Philippines out of the Rome statute, the international legal instrument powering the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Birthed in 1998, it binds over 100 governments or state parties together in a pact to punish the most heinous crimes which include genocide, mass atrocities and what human rights activists would call crimes against humanity.

Those accused of such crimes are often state actors, given their capacity to create untold human suffering by murdering not just one but tens of thousands. This would include those of a certain ethnicity, religion, race and in the case of Duterte, an underclass of criminals, he referred to as pusyers (drug traffickers).

During his time as president, Duterte (above) made good on his populist promise to kill criminals leaving behind a bloody trail of nearly 30,000 victims. This is not including the many others killed...