Rodrigo Duterte, the former strongarm president of the Philippines, surely never thought this would happen. On 14 March he appeared before the International Criminal Court (ICC) via video link from a nearby detention centre at the start of proceedings against him. A pretrial hearing is scheduled for September on charges of crimes against humanity, which could carry a life sentence. Just three days earlier, Duterte had been dramatically arrested and taken to The Hague, in the Netherlands, home of the ICC.

Duterte’s detention offers hope, to people in the Philippines and around the world, that impunity isn’t inevitable and leaders responsible for human rights violations will face justice. It also shows the strengths and weaknesses of current arrangements for international justice.

Human rights crimes in the ‘war on drugs’

There’s little question Duterte has a case to answer. The ICC’s arrest warrant accuses him of being criminally responsible for at least 43 killings during his presidency and in his earlier role as mayor of the city of Davao.

Duterte’s promise to crack down on drug gangs was a central feature of his 2016 presidential election campaign. In what he called a ‘war on drugs’, police gunned down suspects, killing with a presidential guarantee of impunity and reportedly receiving a financial reward for every death. Vigilantes killed others. By the end of Duterte’s term in 2022, an estimated 30,000 people had been killed. Many had been falsely accused, and those killed were mostly from the poorest parts of society, including children.

Duterte didn’t try to hide the killings; he celebrated them. In December 2016, months after winning the presidency, he boasted about his direct role in killings in Davao, compared himself to Hitler and threatened to murder corrupt officials. He also routinely threatened civil society and independent media: his presidency was marked by raids on civil society organisations, reprisals against activists for speaking out and attempts to shut down critical media outlets, creating a climate of fear. Last year he admitted that as mayor of Davao he maintained a ‘death squad’ drawn from the ranks of organised criminals to kill on his orders. He must have thought himself untouchable.

That sense of security would have been reinforced by the fact that the Philippines withdrew from the ICC in March 2019, having given notice of its intention to quit the year before. This move was directly prompted by the court beginning its investigation of Duterte’s human rights crimes. Duterte accused the ICC of being used as a political tool by ‘white idiots’ and threatened to arrest its then chief if she visited the Philippines. But the ICC’s investigation into violations committed while the Philippines was a member continued.

Shifting political calculations

Duterte had to step down at the end of his single presidential term, but it looked like he didn’t have anything to worry about. In the 2022 election his daughter Sara Duterte became vice president alongside Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos, son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, as president. The two offspring of repressive political leaders joined forces on a nationalist ticket boosted by rampant disinformation.

But this coalition of convenience fell apart. The two were increasingly at odds, battling for positioning ahead of mid-term elections this May and a likely presidential bid by Sara Duterte in 2028. Rodrigo Duterte was also planning to run again for mayor of Davao. In June 2024, Sara Duterte quit the cabinet, where she’d served as education minister. She subsequently made the lurid threat to dig up the remains of Marcos’s father and throw them into the sea, and for good measure said she’d hired an assassin to kill Marcos if she was killed. An impeachment trial against her is due later this year.

The government initially said it wouldn’t cooperate with the ICC. But that changed after the split. Marcos now had a powerful incentive to strike a blow against the Duterte family. The government quickly acted on the arrest alert the ICC issued through Interpol.

Patchwork approach

Duterte insists that if he must be tried anywhere, it should be in the Philippines. But in a country where his family exerts some power and he retains a degree of popularity – as protests against his arrest attest – there’ve been no attempts to bring him to justice. This is precisely where the ICC comes in. A global court of last resort, it can prosecute people for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression when national and regional justice processes have failed to act.

In fulfilling this role, the ICC offers hope of addressing a long-running impunity challenge: those who commission and commit the worst crimes are often the least likely to be punished because they’re the most powerful. For many Filipinos who lost family members to Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ and have seen no justice, Duterte’s arrest and extradition gives some confidence that impunity can have its limits and even the most powerful must respect international human rights law.

But at the same time, Duterte’s arrest proves once again that the ICC depends on states’ cooperation. The possibility of subjecting Duterte to justice only arose because of a significant shift in domestic political calculations.

Meanwhile, other ICC arrest warrants remain unexecuted. They include those issued against Vladimir Putin and an associate in March 2023 for the war crime of forcible transfer of children from Ukraine, and against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024 for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.

With these leaders currently safe at home, the only hope of holding them to account is if they visit a country that has ratified the Rome Statute, which means they accept the ICC’s jurisdiction. But several states are taking a selective approach to international justice. They welcomed the warrant against Putin and affirmed they’d enforce it but criticised or distanced themselves from the court’s decision on Israel.

Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán’s instant reaction to the warrant against Netanyahu was to invite him to visit. Germany’s likely next leader, Friedrich Merz, followed up his February election win by saying Netanyahu would be safe in Germany. Mongolia violated its international obligations last September when Putin was able to pay an official visit without fear of arrest.

These challenges point to an ongoing problem of insufficient state cooperation with the ICC. To date, 124 states have ratified the Rome Statute. But many of the world’s most powerful states, including China, Russia and the USA, haven’t and clearly have no plans to do so. This forces the ICC to adopt a patchwork approach to justice, which can leave it open to accusations of being instrumentalised in political battles.

Many of the ICC’s early investigations focused on African countries, which had overwhelmingly joined the court, but this led to accusations of bias. Burundi withdrew in 2017, although, like the Philippines, it did so because the court had launched of an investigation into human rights crimes linked to its leader. But most states have stuck with the ICC, and over the years it has worked where it can, taking advantage of the cooperation of some states and using painstakingly rigorous procedures to put several people responsible for murder and other appalling crimes behind bars.

If the court eventually finds Duterte guilty, another measure of justice will have been served. It will sadly still be the case that many people responsible for gross human rights violations continue to enjoy impunity. Human rights violations in the Philippines, including the government’s vilification, arrest and detention of activists, won’t simply go away either. But in an imperfect world, patchwork justice is better than none. And Duterte’s arrest may give pause to others accused of rights violations who may fear a change in their future political fortunes.

As authoritarian leaders work to undermine norms of international solidarity and a rules-based order in favour of transactional diplomacy and a ‘might makes right’ approach, pressure on the ICC is likely to intensify, particularly when western allies such as Israel are in the spotlight. One of the first acts of the second Trump administration was to impose sanctions on ICC staff, as it did the first time around, accusing the court of being biased against Israel and the USA. Israel has waged a long dirty tricks campaign to undermine the ICC, including through hacking, surveillance, smears and threats. Most recently, an Italian activist who provided evidence to court investigators about the torture of migrants in Libya reported being targeted with spyware.

There’s little doubt the world is becoming more dangerous and volatile, but Duterte’s arrest at least offers the prospect of a degree of justice. In bleak times, this provides hope.

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