Philippines pullout from ICC now in effect

The Philippines withdrawal from the UN International Criminal Court (ICC) on Sunday went into effect amid increasing warnings it would affect adversely alleged human rights violations particularly arising from the government’s brutal and bloody war on illegal drugs.

The first to raise the alarm was Jacqueline de Guia, the spokesman of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), who said the withdrawal would mean a reversal of the country’s commitment to its international treaty obligations and a “step back from the gains” it had achieved in promoting justice and human rights. “In the end,” De Guia warned, “it is the Fillipino people who are bound to lose when they no longer have the recourse in times when local justice systems fail in protecting them. It is then that the impunity wins as a consequence of withdrawal.”

Human rights lawyer and former party list militant congressman Neri Colmenares agreed with De Guia in warning that the withdrawal would worsen extra judicial killings and harasssment of Duterte administration critics as well as ordinary citizens.

Nicholas Bequetin, the regional director for East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific for Amnesty International, however, said the withdrawal should not stop the ICC, based in The Hague in the Netherlands, from holding liable those responsible for the killings in the war on illegal drugs.

Bequetin urged the UN Human Rights Council to launch an “independent international invesigation into the human rights situation in the Phnilippines, including the thouosands of extrajudicial killings still being commited.”

But despite its withdrawal, the Philippines has maintained that it wouold continue to abide by the rule of law and affirmed its commitment to fight impunity for crimes involving atrocities.

Jaime Victor Ledda, the Philippine ambassador to the Netherlands, pointed out that the Philippines has an existing law that would punish crimes identified by the international treaty, called the Statute of Rome, that set up the ICC.

Established in 2002, the ICC was created to prosecute cases identified by the Rome Statute as international crimes - genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.

A year ago, President Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte ordered the withdrawal from the ICC through Teodoro Locsin, the then head of the Philippine mission to the UN and now the country’s foreign secretary, in a formal notice to the UN secretary general.