The issue is sovereignty, says Remulla

IN 2019, after International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Fatou Bensouda started her preliminary examination of the 2017 allegations of drug killings under President Rodrigo Duterte, the president pulled out the Philippines from the 1998 Rome Statute that created the international court at The Hague in order to avoid the criminal legal process.

This withdrawal put the Philippines outside the routine reach of the ICC, which has jurisdiction over the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. But the prosecutor pointed out that the ICC retained jurisdiction over crimes committed in the Philippines between 2011 and 2019, when it was still a member of the ICC.