In an era of collapsing multilateralism, the International Criminal Court (ICC) faces rising threats as four states are in the process of withdrawing and the US government has sanctioned nine court officials. Yet the court continues its work: in 2025, it convicted and sentenced two Central African Republic militia leaders and detained former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, recently rejecting his lawyers’ release request. While the ICC can’t stem the tide of impunity alone, each verdict advances justice.

When Rodrigo Duterte boasted about his role in extrajudicial killings, he never imagined he would end up detained in The Hague. Yet on 27 November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) rejected his lawyers’ request for release, ensuring the former Philippines authoritarian president remains in custody awaiting trial for crimes against humanity.

Duterte’s arrest, extradition and detention offer hope for the many families of victims and shows the ICC can still advance justice – even as four states withdraw their membership and others refuse to cooperate.

Vital progress in challenging impunity

Duterte led what he called a ‘war on drugs’ when he served as president from 2016 to 2022, and during his earlier career as mayor of Davao City. Police had the freedom to kill whoever they deemed a suspect, with a reported financial bonus for each killing and a presidential guarantee of immunity. By the time Duterte stepped down, an estimated 30,000 people had been killed, some of them children. They mostly came from the poorest parts of society, and many were falsely accused.

Duterte gloried in the deaths. Months after winning the presidency, he boasted about his direct role in killings in Davao City. Last year he admitted that when he was mayor he maintained a death squad of organised criminals to kill on his orders. Filipino police finally arrested him on 11 March, acting on an ICC arrest warrant.

Duterte’s lawyers claim he shouldn’t be kept in detention due to his declining health, saying that diminished cognitive faculties mean he’s no longer able to work on his defence, although reports from those who’ve visited him cast doubt on this assertion. Duterte, aged 80, may well ultimately escape justice, because it can take the ICC many years to complete the laborious process of gathering evidence, hearing legal arguments, holding trials and exhausting appeals before a guilty verdict is confirmed.

Relatives of drug war victims react to a live stream of the ICC denying Duterte’s appeal for interim release, Quezon City, Philippines, 28 November 2025. Photo by Eloisa Lopez/Reuters via Gallo Images.

But justice can come, as a judgment reached this year on a case involving the Central African Republic (CAR) bears out. On 24 July, the ICC sentenced two militia leaders to 15 and 12 years in prison for crimes against humanity and war crimes. The two, Patrice-Édouard Ngaïssona and Alfred Yékatom, were leaders of the Anti-Balaka movement, which engaged in a bloody civil conflict when the Séléka rebel coalition took control in 2013. Séléka recruited mostly from Muslim populations, and in response Anti-Balaka, associated with the CAR’s Christian majority, targeted Muslim civilians.

It took over a decade for the two to be held responsible for atrocities committed in 2013 and 2014. But the verdict, which recognises their responsibility for both crimes they directly committed and those they commanded, brings relief to survivors and acts as a warning that impunity can’t be taken for granted. Civil society, which played a key role in gathering evidence and supporting survivors, has again proved its worth.

At the same time, the verdict raised concerns about selective justice, with the court accused of targeting Anti-Balaka rather than Séléka leaders. Perceptions of this kind can perpetuate divisions and fuel animosity along religious and political lines. Two senior Séléka personnel are subject to ICC proceedings, but one has absconded while the other is involved in a trial that began in 2022. However, it’s also the case that some former Séléka officials are now involved in government and so are able to exert political influence against investigations.

Voices from the frontline

Fulbert Ngodji is Central Africa analyst at the International Crisis Group, an independent organisation that provides expert analysis to help prevent and resolve deadly conflicts

 

Beyond the individual sentences, this decision has a broader significance. It restores dignity to the survivors and transforms the memory of violence into a foundation for rebuilding institutions. The case, which followed the CAR’s self-referral to the ICC in 2014, has become one of the most emblematic trials due to its use of digital evidence and symbolic importance for post-conflict justice. For a country still plagued by identity and social divisions, this decision represents both punishment and hope for breaking a cycle of revenge and fear that has marked its recent history.

Civil society has played a crucial role in bridging the gap between international justice and realities on the ground. Local civil society organisations (CSOs), including victims’ associations, were the first to document crimes, collect testimonies and accompany survivors through often complex and intimidating legal proceedings. Without their work, many of the stories and experiences of the affected communities would never have been heard in The Hague. Their presence helped make the process more inclusive and gave victims the feeling that justice was not being done for them, but with them.

These organisations built trust between communities and the judicial system. After years of unpunished violence, many people in the CAR doubted an international court could achieve results. CSOs and local leaders helped explain the ICC’s role, its procedures and limitations. By translating legal developments into local languages and using community radio stations, they made the process understandable and countered disinformation.

CSOs also provided direct support to victims, including counselling, legal assistance and protection to those who testified. Their efforts gave survivors the confidence to speak out and ensured their voices remained central to proceedings.

 

This is an edited extract of our conversation with Fulbert. Read the full interview here.

Patchwork justice

The CAR case started when the government referred it to the ICC, pointing to a key weakness: while the ICC is unusual in that it gives no immunity to heads of state, it’s hard for it to act unless states cooperate. In the Philippines, the warrant against Duterte was executed when political calculations changed, after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Duterte’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, had a spectacular falling out. Suddenly it made sense for Marcos to cooperate with the court, striking a blow against his highly vocal opponent.

The pattern of ratifications of the Rome Statute, through which states submit themselves to the ICC’s jurisdiction, leads to a patchwork of justice dependent on state cooperation. Altogether 125 states are parties to the Rome Statute, but there are some major holdouts, including three of the United Nations (UN) Security Council’s five permanent members – China, Russia and the USA – along with Israel and other states currently home to major conflict-related human rights violations, such as Myanmar and Sudan.

In its early years, because many African states quickly ratified the Rome Statute and referred cases to the court, the ICC focused mostly on African cases. In doing so, the ICC took advantage of the willingness of governments to cooperate. This eventually prompted criticism that the court was biased and neocolonial. But when it’s tried to confront globally powerful states such as Israel and Russia, the court has run up against hard geopolitical realities.

The ICC can still investigate if states agree to grant jurisdiction, its chief prosecutor decides to start a case or the Security Council asks it to – although the Council’s entrenched veto-enabled deadlock makes this unlikely – but if states don’t cooperate, powerful figures walk free.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin both remain subject to ICC arrest warrants, Netanyahu for crimes against humanity and the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare in Gaza and Putin for the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of children in Ukraine. Both face no real prospect of prosecution unless their political fortunes dramatically wane.

ICC arrest warrants should at least constrain these leaders’ ability to travel, since ICC member states are required to arrest them. But in practice, states may choose not to. Netanyahu was free to visit Hungary in April, where he received a red-carpet welcome from hardline right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, just as Putin was assured he wouldn’t be arrested when he travelled to Mongolia last year. Germany’s leader Friedrich Merz also said Netanyahu would be free to visit. There are no real consequences for non-compliance. Putin has also made trips to non-ICC members, including India and North Korea, while Netanyahu is a frequent visitor to the USA, and has said he’ll continue to travel to New York despite incoming mayor Zohran Mamdani’s promise to arrest him.

At a less high-profile level, in January the Italian police arrested Libyan warlord Ossama Anjiem, acting on an ICC arrest warrant, only for a court to release him on a technicality and send him home. The decision was controversial because the Italian government has extensive economic and political ties with Libya, including cooperation to detain African migrants in Libya rather than allow them to cross to Italy. Detained migrants are subjected to horrendous human rights violations, with Anjiem among those implicated, which would have made a trial embarrassing to the Italian government. More positively, in July German authorities arrested another Libyan, Khaled Mohamed Ali El Hishri, wanted for crimes against humanity and war crimes, and recently transferred him to The Hague.

States heading to the exit

Now the court’s membership is threatening to shrink. Hungary followed Netanyahu’s visit by announcing it would withdraw from the ICC, a process that takes a year. Three military-run states in West Africa – Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – collectively announced their withdrawal in September, saying the court has become a tool of neocolonial repression and promising to set up alternative justice mechanisms.

These moves reflect a broader growing pattern of global rule-breaking, with one of the tactics being withdrawal from international institutions. Shortly after taking power, the Trump administration announced it was pulling out of the Paris Agreement, the UN Human Rights Council and the World Health Organization (WHO), and subsequently confirmed its departure from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), while it also refused to participate in the November G20 summit in South Africa.

The US government’s hostility towards the ICC has seen it apply sanctions to nine officials. The fear of being penalised for sanctions violations caused two US-based human rights groups to stay away from the ICC’s annual meeting in early December. Encouragingly, numerous states reacted to the sanctions by expressing their continuing support for the court.

Argentina, under the far-right leadership of President Javier Milei, followed Trump’s lead in pulling out of the WHO, while Nicaragua’s authoritarian government has quit even more than the USA: between February and May it left the International Labour Organization, International Organization for Migration, UNESCO, UN Food and Agriculture Organization and UN Human Rights Council. Before announcing their departure from the ICC, in January Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger formally completed their exit from the Economic Community of West African States, establishing a rival organisation, the Alliance of Sahel States.

Many of these moves have been about evading international accountability, coming in response to multilateral bodies’ criticism of authoritarian governments and leaders. The two previous states to leave the ICC, Burundi and the Philippines, did so after ICC investigations irritated political leaders. The ICC’s case against Duterte is only possible because he committed his alleged crimes when the government was still a member.

The latest instances of withdrawals from and refusals to cooperate with the ICC are even more disturbing because they come at a time when the fundamental idea of multilateral cooperation is being contested and mass-scale human rights atrocities such as those Israel is committing in Gaza risk becoming normalised.

More not less justice needed

As the global court of last resort, the ICC is meant to step in and judge the worst crimes when national and regional-level justice mechanisms don’t. But the power and impunity offenders often enjoy at the national level, combined with under-investment in regional courts, mean there’s a great gap the ICC can’t possibly fill.

In the CAR, part of the problem is that its Special Criminal Court – composed of national and international judges to try serious crimes committed during its conflict – has been hampered by a lack of resources, long delays, political manoeuvring, transparency shortfalls and a failure by authorities to act on arrest warrants. Criticisms that the ICC hasn’t held more people accountable in part reflect the problems of this parallel process. In Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, where military governments have taken numerous steps to limit accountability of those in power, it’s unlikely any new justice mechanism will hold jihadist insurgents, government forces and Russian mercenaries who’ve all committed crimes to account.

Justice at all levels – national, regional and global – is needed. The ICC can’t do the job alone, but it makes an important contribution. Without it, it’s likely the CAR’s human rights criminals would be walking free and Duterte would still be at liberty in the Philippines. The court, which originated from a civil society idea and came about after years of civil society advocacy, continues to take vital steps towards challenging impunity. For victims watching powerful perpetrators face justice they always expected to evade, these imperfect victories matter immensely.

OUR CALLS FOR ACTION

  • Non-member states should ratify the Rome Statute to join the International Criminal Court and those currently withdrawing from the court should remain.
  • Civil society should push for universal ratification and the strengthening of the International Criminal Court.
  • States subject to the Rome Statute should condemn US sanctions on court officials and act on ICC arrest warrants when those accused of crimes enter their territory.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

Cover photo by Eloisa Lopez/Reuters via Gallo Images