The walls that once shielded Rodrigo Duterte came crashing down on March 11. The very state institutions that carried out his murderous bidding arrested him after a warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC), where he now stands trial for crimes against humanity. 

Duterte’s detention at The Hague marks a partial victory in the people’s push for justice and a reckoning with a judicial system that has long exempted the powerful. 

In contesting the ICC arrest, Duterte and his allies decried supposed transgressions against the country’s sovereign rights—the very rights his administration spent years eroding. He permitted Chinese incursions into the West Philippine Sea, subjected the country to exploitative Chinese loans, and welcomed substantial US military aid despite his anti-West posture.

Invoking sovereignty is therefore a desperate attempt to whitewash his rule while deliberately obscuring how his policies undermined national integrity. Yet true sovereignty, as enshrined in the Constitution, “resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them.” Engaging with the ICC is an expression of the people’s sovereign will to exact justice upon the state’s failure to do so.

Such need arises from the incapacity of the Philippines’s judicial institutions, which have long struggled to hold rights violators accountable. While isolated cases like the conviction of police officers in the Kian delos Santos case show that some level of justice has been imposed, these indictments have only targeted low-ranking enforcers while the architects of the violence that led to around 30,000 deaths remain untouched. 

Even though President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s cooperation with the ICC may be influenced by his falling out with the Dutertes, it is ultimately the victims and their families who have kept this effort alive, persistently bringing their cases before the court. Recent polls also show that most Filipinos support the ICC’s investigation into the drug war killings, affirming that this is the crystallization of the people’s expression of their sovereign will. 

This desire for justice, however, must extend beyond merely bringing Duterte to trial. The entire fortress of impunity enveloping administrations must also be dismantled. Duterte’s impending conviction is only one monumental step toward complete victory. 

Many rights violations under his administration, including massacres and crackdowns on dissenters, remain unaddressed even by local courts. Such a trend persists until today. Despite Marcos’s claims to have departed from Duterte’s brutal war on drugs, at least 119 extrajudicial killings and over 944 drug-related deaths have been recorded since he took office. His refusal to rejoin the ICC further reinforces this continuity, and cements his attempt to evade accountability for his own administration’s transgressions while he postures to signify a clean break from his predecessor.

These continuities emphasize that for the ICC case should not end with Duterte’s conviction alone, but should also set a precedent for addressing other unresolved abuses. It should serve as an impetus to strengthen mechanisms for accountability and compliance with international humanitarian laws. All oppressive structures underpinning state violence must be overhauled.

This means not only restoring public confidence in domestic institutions through concrete judicial and institutional reforms, but also taking decisive steps like rescinding the still-operational guidelines on the drug campaign, repealing the repressive Anti-Terrorism Law, and abolishing the red-tagging institution National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.

Beyond domestic structural changes, ensuring accountability means establishing checks and balances that go beyond the state's own legal framework and recognize its consensual membership in the community of nations. Thus, rejoining the ICC must also be advanced as a safeguard to preclude those in power from wielding authority beyond the people’s sovereign will and rights.

Duterte’s case is not just about one man’s reckoning. It will also serve as an indictment of an entire system and as an opportunity for the people to press the government for more long-term measures that will deter the rise of any forms of despotism. It is, above all, a chance to tear down the walls that have long kept justice out of reach. ●

First published in the March 31, 2025, print edition of the Collegian.