In Defense of the Right to Life: Analyzing Factors Affecting Filipino Opinion About Death Penalty Figure 1. The Iceberg Model – from the presentation of Dr. Mai Sato, Public Opinion as a Barrier to Abolition? Plenary: Progress and Setbacks in Asia – Lessons to be Learnt, 6th World Congress Against the Death Penalty, Oslo, Norway, 21-23 June 2016.20 With this in mind, The Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines (CHRP) commissioned the conduct of a nationwide survey in 2018, National Survey on Public Perception about The Death Penalty, perhaps the first of its kind in the Philippines, to explore beyond the surface of the Filipino public’s opinion on the death penalty.21 It is the first to explore thought processes and disentangle layers of perceptions about the death penalty, and in the process unearth what is behind the choices of the respondents, through providing questions on different aspects that could have a relation to their perception of the death penalty. The data for this paper was drawn from the aforementioned survey and its analysis presents findings from the survey on what are the factors underlying the Filipino public’s position on the death penalty. This paper is expected to identify who supports the death penalty and why they support it. In doing so, CHRP will be able to target which sector of the public they would like to change their support for the death penalty, and thus craft policy recommendations that are aimed to weaken public support for the death penalty. Dr. Mai Sato, Public opinion as a barrier to abolition?, Presentation at the 6th World Congress Against the Death Penalty (21-23 June 2016) available at http://congres.ecpm.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Presentations_Plenary-Asia.pdf (last accessed 4 September 2020). 21 Social Weather Stations, March 2018 National Survey on Public Perceptions on the Death Penalty: 33% or less demand the death penalty for 6 of 7 crimes related to illegal drugs, SWS, 10 October 2018, available at https://www.sws.org.ph/swsmain/ artcldisppage/?artcsyscode=ART-20181010122553 (last accessed 4 September 2020). 20 5