This day was a long time coming
Rodrigo Duterte arrived in The Hague. He was seen in person. The former president of the Philippines, a man who once dared the court to try him and who promised to slap its prosecutor, stood today not in a Manila palace but inside the permanent buildings of the International Criminal Court. His appearance on 16 September 2026, captured in terse court filings and agency photographs, marks the beginning of a process he long sought to avoid, a formal reckoning for a presidency defined by a single, bloody campaign. His victims have waited years. The trial proper will not begin until 30 November, but his presence in the Netherlands represents a profound moment.
That campaign was his 'war on drugs'. It was his central promise. Launched the moment he took office in 2016, it gave a green light to Philippine National Police officers and vigilante associates to kill suspected drug users and dealers with near total impunity. This policy created a pervasive climate of fear that gripped the poorest districts of Manila, Cebu City and other urban centres across the archipelago. Thousands died. The government's own figures eventually admitted to more than six thousand deaths in official police operations alone, but human rights organisations and journalists have consistently argued the true number is potentially four or five times higher. Officials presented these deaths as the regrettable but necessary cost of cleansing the nation.
The ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor began its preliminary examination into the killings in February 2018. This provoked a furious reaction from Duterte’s government in Manila. His response was not to cooperate, nor to investigate the allegations himself, but to denounce the court and withdraw his country from its founding treaty. He was defiant. The Philippines formally completed its withdrawal from the Rome Statute in March 2019, with Duterte arguing the treaty had never been legally binding domestically and that the court possessed no authority over his sovereign nation. This move was a deliberate calculation, a political act designed to place him and his officials permanently beyond the reach of international justice. It was a clear challenge.
The gamble failed. The court's prosecutors simply pressed ahead, submitting a request to open a full investigation on the grounds that their legal authority was not affected by the withdrawal. The court’s judges agreed. Under Article 127 of the Rome Statute, a country’s withdrawal does not affect its obligation to cooperate with criminal investigations that began before the exit became effective, a critical provision specifically designed to stop leaders from orchestrating mass crimes and then simply walking away from accountability. That rule binds him. The long path from the Malacañang Palace to the dock in The Hague was paved by that simple, foundational clause in the court’s own charter.
The charge is murder as state policy
The formal charge is murder. In the lexicon of the International Criminal Court, this translates to the specific crime against humanity of murder, constituting part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population with knowledge of the attack. The distinction is vital. Prosecutors are not required to prove Duterte’s personal involvement in any single killing. They must prove that the campaign of killings was official policy. That it was organised. The attack was the 'war on drugs'.
The prosecution’s case alleges a clear system. It was a system that identified suspects, often from crude neighbourhood watch lists drawn up by local officials, and then dispatched police or vigilantes to neutralise them. Neutralise was the official euphemism. It meant to kill. This alleged machine involved public incitement from the president himself, pressure on local governments to demonstrate results, and a culture of total impunity for the police officers and armed men who carried out the killings. This was not chaos. This was statecraft. The court will hear extensive evidence on the structure of this campaign, from the presidential palace down to the street corner informant. The argument is that thousands of people were executed not in spite of the state, but because of it.
This pattern of killing was not new. It was, the prosecution will claim, a model perfected years earlier. During his long tenure as the mayor of Davao City in the southern Philippines, Duterte cultivated a reputation as a hardline crime fighter who brought order to a place once known as the country’s murder capital. His method allegedly involved the use of clandestine assassins, the so called 'Davao Death Squad', who targeted petty criminals, drug users and street children with ruthless efficiency. Human rights groups documented hundreds of these murders for years. The blueprint was there. The tactics seen across the nation from 2016, particularly the use of masked gunmen on motorbikes, were a horrifying echo of the methods developed on the streets of Davao. It was simply scaled up.
Crucially, the case is not just about the existence of this lethal system. It is about Duterte’s central role within it. He was not a bystander. Prosecutors will present a mountain of evidence, including transcripts from his own rambling speeches and press conferences, where he repeatedly and explicitly encouraged police to kill suspects and promised them legal protection from any consequences. He knew what was happening. He publicly celebrated it. The case before the judges in The Hague is that he was the violence’s chief architect and its most vocal champion, transforming murder from a discrete crime into an open instrument of national policy. That is why he is on trial.
A trial for the court itself
This prosecution is a profound test for the International Criminal Court itself. Its own legitimacy is on the line. For two decades the court, based in The Hague, has battled accusations of selective justice and political impotence, a legal body with grand ideals but limited global authority. This trial matters. A conviction would be a landmark. An acquittal or a collapsed case would be a disaster.
The court has powerful critics. It has powerful enemies. The United States, China and Russia have never accepted its jurisdiction, viewing it as a threat to their sovereignty and consistently working to limit its reach. This creates a glaring accountability gap. It means the court is often left to pursue leaders from smaller, less powerful nations while those from the permanent members of the UN Security Council remain untouchable. This reality has been the single most damaging source of criticism levelled against the institution since its inception, feeding a narrative that it exists to police the weak on behalf of the strong.
For much of its history, this critique appeared justified by the court’s own caseload. The overwhelming majority of its indictments were against individuals from African states. This led to a furious backlash from the African Union, which accused the court of being a neocolonial tool, an instrument of 'race hunting'. The perception stuck. The court became known to many as the 'African Criminal Court'. The prosecution of a former head of state from Southeast Asia is therefore a critical strategic move, an attempt to demonstrate that its mandate is truly global and that no region is beyond its scrutiny. It directly confronts the court’s oldest and most persistent political problem.
Rodrigo Duterte is not a militia leader from a collapsed state. He was the elected president of a sovereign nation of more than 100 million people, a key member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Bringing a figure of his stature to trial represents a significant escalation for the court, placing it in direct opposition to a brand of authoritarian populism that has gained ground across the world. A successful prosecution would send a clear signal that the rhetoric of strongman rule, the open advocacy of extrajudicial violence, has consequences that extend beyond national borders. It would establish a vital precedent. It would prove the court has teeth. Failure, however, would embolden autocrats everywhere, reinforcing their belief that international law is a paper tiger, easily defied and ultimately ignored. Everything is at stake.
A nation watches from afar
In the Philippines, the proceedings in The Hague are not a distant legal drama. They are a national obsession. They are a wound. The country is split down the middle, watching a man who is simultaneously a hero to millions and a mass murderer to millions more. For his vast base of support, Rodrigo Duterte remains the tough talking mayor who became the strong father of the nation, the only politician willing to wage a necessary war against the drug dealers and criminals they felt had ruined their communities. They see the trial not as a pursuit of justice but as a colonial spectacle, an attack by western elites on a leader who defended his people. He is their champion. His popularity endures.
This division presents an almost impossible problem for the current government in Manila. It is a political bind. The administration must perform a delicate balancing act between the powerful political forces loyal to the former president and the demands of international accountability. For years, the government refused to cooperate with the International Criminal Court’s investigation, asserting national sovereignty and claiming its own justice system was perfectly functional. The decision to eventually allow the process to move forward, culminating in Duterte’s transfer to The Hague, was a profound and risky political calculation, one that has angered a huge segment of its own electorate. The government watches. It waits.
For the families of the dead, this moment is the culmination of a decade of grief and struggle. They are the other Philippines. These are the mothers, wives and children of the people killed in the nightly raids, their bodies often dumped on street corners with a cardboard sign proclaiming their alleged crimes. For years, they have fought for this. They faced threats. They faced intimidation. They organised, documented the killings with painstaking care, provided testimony to human rights groups and kept the pressure on a system that wanted to forget. Their persistence, often at great personal risk, built the foundation of the case now being heard thousands of miles away in a Dutch courtroom.
Two irreconcilable versions of the country now stare at each other across a vast divide. One sees a patriot betrayed, the other sees a tyrant brought to book. In the shanty towns of Manila and the provincial cities of Mindanao, televisions will be tuned to the news from Europe, with every legal argument and procedural motion interpreted as a victory or a defeat for one side. The trial may be taking place in The Hague, but the verdict will be delivered in the hearts and minds of 115 million people. The future of the Philippines is also on trial.
The trial will not be swift
The trial begins on 30 November. It will not be swift. International criminal proceedings operate on a geological timescale, a slow accretion of evidence, testimony and procedural argument that can stretch for years. This is by design. The case against a former head of state is not a simple murder trial, it is an attempt to map the entire machinery of a state policy, and that takes an immense amount of time. Years will pass. The world will watch.
The prosecution’s task is immense. They must prove thousands of individual killings were part of a 'widespread and systematic attack' directed against a civilian population, not just random acts of violence by rogue police. They have to connect the words Duterte spoke in televised addresses to the bullets fired in the slums of Tondo. This is the challenge. Defence lawyers will try to break that chain. They will question witnesses. They will attack the evidence. They will deny the court has any authority at all.
A precedent will be set. The simple fact of a former head of state for a major Southeast Asian nation sitting in the dock at The Hague changes the calculations for leaders everywhere. A conviction would revitalise the court. It would demonstrate that the mechanisms of international justice can, eventually, reach across continents and penetrate the shield of sovereign power. Some justice would be done. An acquittal, however, would be a devastating blow to the ICC, fuelling accusations of political bias and prosecutorial overreach that have dogged it for two decades. Its authority would be wounded. The verdict, when it finally comes, will be a judgement not just on Rodrigo Duterte but on the very idea of a global legal order.
Sources. BBC News World: Philippines' Duterte seen in person for first time at International Criminal Court. Al Jazeera: Duterte in person at ICC for first time over ‘war on drugs’ killings.
Analysis. Drafted with AI assistance from the sources listed above and reviewed by an editor before publication. Jnews links to the organisations it writes about.
