Marcos: We’re done with ICC
MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. said on Friday that the government is "done" with the International Criminal Court days after it announced its decision to resume its probe into the drug war killings under the Duterte administration.
“That’s it. We have no appeals pending. We have no more actions being taken. So, I suppose that puts an end to our dealings with the ICC,” Marcos said during an event in Zamboanga Sibugay.
“So, we continue to defend the sovereignty of the Philippines and continue to question the jurisdiction of the ICC in their investigations here in the Philippines,” the president added.
The ICC on Tuesday rejected the appeal of the Philippine government to pause the investigation into the alleged crimes against humanity committed during the war on drugs of the previous administration. This greenlighted its prosecutors to start issuing warrants of arrest in the Philippines.
Marcos once again said that the government will not cooperate “in any way or form” with the ICC. He also repeated the Philippine government’s arguments that the ICC retains no jurisdiction and has no right to resume its probe.
Similarly, Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra said on Tuesday that the engagement of the Philippines with the ICC has come to an end after the decision of the ICC Appeals Chambers.
Families of victims of extrajudicial killings and their lawyers earlier welcomed the ICC's decision, saying that this is an important step towards achieving justice.
In November 2019, during the Duterte administration, the ICC moved to suspend its probe into the country's drug war after the Philippine government said it would initiate its own investigation into the deaths associated with the “bloody” war on drugs.
However, the pre-trial chamber of the ICC reinstated its probe in January 2023, citing inadequate domestic investigations.
This prompted Philippine authorities to challenge the ICC's jurisdiction in March. They insisted that the court had no authority over the country due to the Philippines' withdrawal from the Rome Statute on March 17, 2019.
The ICC rejected this appeal, asserting that Article 127 of the Rome Statute makes it clear that "a State shall not be discharged, by reason of its withdrawal, from the obligations arising from this Statute while it was a Party to the Statute."
The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) pressed the government on Wednesday to view the ICC decision as a way to fulfill its obligation to victims of abuses committed during the drug war.
In its 2022 report on the alleged extrajudicial killings that happened under Duterte, the CHR found that internal investigations into law enforcement operations resulting in deaths were "unavailable and lacking transparency." — with reports by Gaea Katreena Cabico and James Relativo
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