ICC Is Investigating Duterte, Who Suddenly Wants Out

He says Philippines is withdrawing from the ICC, 'effective immediately'

By Kate Seamons, Newser Staff

(Newser)-Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has had a bumpy relationship with the
International Criminal Court. He once described it as "bulls---," then in February said he
welcomed its preliminary investigation into allegations of crimes against humanity during
Duterte's war on drugs. Now, he says he'll pull the Philippines from the court altogether, "effective
immediately," though the BBC reports that formally withdrawing from the ICC is a year-long
process. "It is apparent that the ICC is being utilized as a political tool against the Philippines,"
he said, while blasting the "baseless, unprecedented, and outrageous attacks" directed at him by
the UN. The Guardian looks at the recent-most bad blood between the two that apparently spurred
those comments.
Duterte's government put a UN special rapporteur on a list of communist terrorists,
leading the body's commissioner for human rights to say last week that Duterte needs "some sort
of psychiatric examination." Should the Philippines successfully withdraw its ratification of the
treaty that created the ICC, it would be only the second country to do so, after Burundi. But that
wouldn't protect Duterte from a potential trial, as the treaty states "withdrawal shall not affect any
cooperation with the court in connection with criminal investigations." Still, the BBC notes it could
make the Philippines less cooperative. Speaking of cooperation, the country's Senate on Monday
flagged the constitutional provision that requires the Senate to agree to the revocation of any
international treaty. Duterte contends the Senate failed to publicize its 2011 ratification of the
treaty as required by law, reports the Associated Press.

References:
https://www.newser.com/story/256563/duterte-called-the-icc-bulls-now-he-wants-out.html
ADVANCING: Global Governance
Globalization is a rich and a broad concept and may be defined in various perspectives. It
cannot be denied that globalization has made a tremendous impact on the sovereign state. Fowler
and Bunck (1996) emphasized that a sovereign state has a territory, the people, and a government.
Any state admitted as a member of the United Nations will be upon the decision of the
General Assembly as recommended by the Security Council. The United Nations membership
requirements are: (1) the state must be a peace-loving state which accepts the obligations contained
in the present Charter, and (2) in the judgment of the Organization, must be able and willing to
carry out these obligations.
Chapter 2, Article 4 of the United Nations Charter states that only sovereign states can
become members of the United Nations. Although all UN members are fully sovereign states at
the present, the Belarus, India, Philippines, and Ukraine- four of the original members- were not
independent at the time of their admission in the organization.
Even from the seventeenth century, the legal framework of a sovereign state has served as
a definitive ground for political governance and economic system. Sovereignty has been
constitutionally used both on national and international levels. The fragmented national
economies. Sovereign states are experiencing increased difficulties in supplying regulatory and
redistributive public goods and establishing and enforcing property rights in the face of relatively
open trade, rapid information-technology advances, and considerable financial deregulation.
Moreover, both market relations and political discontent with economic policies have virtually
become "borderless."
The international system has now become less state-centric that makes a way into the
political constitution of domestic policies. Notably, the advancements in technology and its
innovations have increased the speed of the migration and transplantation of legal rules and
policies.
The transnational actors, which are non-state, such as the intergovernmental organizations
(IGOS), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), and transnational corporations
(TNCs) have assumed relevant roles in global governance. They have created transnational law
that runs many dimensions of the political economy that was once governed by the sovereign
states.
Sovereignty is at the heart of both public international law and the legal constitution of the
state. Relevant changes in the international system definitely affect the shape of sovereignty and
the future of the state law.
However today, any sovereign state cannot just neglect issues that are related to the
interests of the humanity, may they be within the borders or outside the borders of the state.
Individuals and groups enjoy greater recognition as subjects of international law, as seen in the
expansion of legal regimes and enforceable mechanisms in the fields of international human rights
law, international refugee law, intemational criminal law, and the like. Victor Peskin observes that
the United Nations Security Council's ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda
continued to trump state sovereignty insofar as targeted states and all other UN members were
legally bound to comply. However, the development of international criminal tribunals suggests a
changing balance of tribunal authority and state sovereignty. He criticizes the next generation of
war crimes tribunals as supporting the expansion of the influence of state judicial actors as well as
the strengthening of the doctrine of sovereignty.
The Rome statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) upholds the principle of
complementarities and recognizes that states do not have to collaborate with the court unless they
have ratified the statute. However, this is only part of the picture. The establishment of special
hybrid courts in Cambodia, East Timor, Lebanon, and Sierra Leone means that states no longer
see sovereign state law alone as a sufficient means of punishing serious war crimes. The decisions
of international judges and prosecutors now permeate and shape the domestic criminal law of these
countries. William Burke-White further asserts that the ICC has become part of a system of
multilevel global governance through its alteration of state preferences and policies and its
deterrence of future crimes through judicial and prosecutorial pronouncements.
International law has evolved into a central framework for the emergent system of global
governance. This system supplies the normative mechanisms for the establishment of IGOS and
the facilitation of the international response to issues as diverse as nuclear proliferation, climate
change, ocean use, and the functioning of the world trade system. Alexandra Khrebtukova
insightfully points out, "[n]ational borders no longer confine the diverse views that prioritize
subjects of intemational law.... different perspectives are often less identifiable with specific states
than with discrete branches of the law, each manifesting separate functional perceptions of what
that law should take as its primary focus.
A sovereign state and its laws are changing; they are transforming according to their
relevance to the international system. A state may, in some point in time, opt to comply with the
international and transnational standards. However, the adaptive power of the state law should not
be underestimated.
Generally speaking, the laws that govern the sovereign state are strong and flexible enough
to endure many challenges along the way. Even with globalization around, the laws are here to
stand firm on the political influence over the lives of sovereign state’s people and the majority of
peoples around the globe.