The World Briefly

July 19, 2023

Making War

Philippines

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) rejected an appeal by the Philippines to prevent the court’s prosecutors from investigating former President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody “war on drugs,” CNN reported Tuesday.

The court’s ruling came months after the ICC announced it would revive its investigation into possible “crimes against humanity” during Duterte’s term between 2016 and 2022.

The court suspended the probe in 2021 after the Philippine government said it was conducting its own investigation.

During his tenure, Duterte ordered a crackdown on drug trafficking in the Southeast Asian nation that resulted in the deaths of more than 6,000 people, according to police data.

However, independent monitors believe the death toll is higher, adding that many of the extrajudicial killings of suspected drug offenders took place in the country’s poorest areas.

The ICC initially announced an investigation into the anti-narcotics operations in 2018, which prompted Duterte to withdraw the Philippines’ membership from the court soon after.

But the Netherlands-based court’s withdrawal mechanism keeps jurisdiction over crimes committed during the membership period of a state – in this case, between 2016 and 2019, when the Philippines’ pullout became official.

Following Tuesday’s verdict, the court said the Philippines has exhausted all its options to appeal.

Human rights groups and victims’ relatives hope the ruling “will be a turn in the tide against impunity in the Philippines.”

Even so, Duterte’s successor, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has said Manila will “disengage” from any contact with the ICC and that it does not recognize its jurisdiction.

This story originally appeared in the July 19, 2023 newsletter, Moving On.