Series: The Hague Is Not The Way
Why the ICC’s Warrant Against Dela Rosa Is the Wrong Justice in the Wrong Place
Part 1: The Case, the Court, and the Question Nobody Is Asking |
Part 2: The Legal Maze |
Part 3: Sovereignty ✦ |
Part 4: Power, Politics, and the ICC’s Dirty Secret |
Part 5: Who Were the Victims? |
Part 6: The Ethics of Justice |
Part 7: The Theological Reckoning
Why this is our Fight, Not the Hague’s
Here is a question that should bother every Filipino, regardless of whether they liked or hated the drug war: when the ICC moves against a Filipino senator, who gave it permission to do that?
Not who cooperated. Not who opened the gate. The deeper question: under whose authority does a court in the Netherlands exercise power over a citizen of the Republic of the Philippines, on Philippine soil, for alleged crimes committed on Philippine soil, by Philippine law enforcement officers, against Filipino victims?
That question is not rhetorical. It is constitutional. And the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines has a very clear answer, one that most media coverage of the Dela Rosa case has completely ignored.
This is Part 3 of the series The Hague Is Not The Way. Part 2 walked through the legal maze: the Rome Statute, Article 127, the split in the ICC itself over whether it even has jurisdiction after the Philippines withdrew. This post steps back from the treaty text and asks the bigger question. Not “can the ICC do this legally?” but “should it, given what the Philippine Constitution demands of its own government?” And there is a twist in the story that most people have missed entirely: the Marcos administration’s cooperation with the ICC may not be an act of justice at all. The scholarly paper this series is based on argues it may be an act of political warfare, dressed up in the language of accountability.
For the complete legal and multidisciplinary analysis, the full 62-page scholarly paper is available for download at the end of this post.
The Constitution Speaks First
Every law, every treaty, every executive action in the Philippines must pass one test: does it conform to the 1987 Constitution? The Constitution is the supreme law. Nothing overrides it. Not a statute passed by Congress. Not a treaty signed by the President. Not a warrant issued by a court in The Hague.
Two articles of the 1987 Constitution are directly relevant to the ICC’s authority over Dela Rosa.
Understanding the Theory
The Constitutional Commands on Sovereignty
Article II, Section 2 — 1987 Constitution
“The Philippines renounces war as an instrument of national policy, adopts the generally accepted principles of international law as part of the law of the land and adheres to the policy of peace, equality, justice, freedom, cooperation, and amity with all nations.”
In plain language: The Philippines accepts international law, yes. But it accepts it as part of Philippine law, meaning it passes through and is shaped by the Constitution. International law does not sit above the Constitution. It enters through it.
Article VII, Section 21 — 1987 Constitution
“No treaty or international agreement shall be valid and effective unless concurred in by at least two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.”
In plain language: Any international agreement that binds the Philippines requires Senate approval. This is the people’s check on executive power in foreign affairs.
Article II, Section 7 — 1987 Constitution
“The State shall pursue an independent foreign policy. In its relations with other states the paramount consideration shall be national sovereignty, territorial integrity, national interest, and the right to self-determination.”
In plain language: The Constitution does not just permit sovereignty. It commands it. The Philippine state is required by its own founding document to treat national sovereignty as a paramount, not optional, consideration in all foreign relations — including any decision about whether to hand over a Filipino senator to a court in another country.
Put those three provisions together and the constitutional picture becomes clear. International law enters through the Constitution, not above it. Treaties require Senate concurrence. And sovereignty is a command, not a preference. The paper this series is based on argues that these three provisions, read together, mean that the Philippine government’s obligation to its own Constitution must come before its accommodation of an ICC warrant, particularly when the ICC’s own jurisdiction is legally contested (Diaz, 2026, Section IV-A).
Understanding the Concept
What Is Sovereignty, Really?
Sovereignty, at its simplest, is the right of a people to govern themselves. A sovereign state has the exclusive authority to make and enforce its own laws within its own territory, without needing permission from any outside power.
In the context of the ICC, sovereignty raises a very specific question: when a Philippine senator allegedly committed crimes in the Philippines against Filipino victims, does the Philippines, or a court in the Netherlands, have the primary right and responsibility to deliver justice?
The ICC’s own founding document, the Rome Statute, actually answers this: the Philippines should go first. The ICC is supposed to step in only when national courts have genuinely failed. That principle is called complementarity. Think of it this way: the ICC is the referee who steps in only when the local game completely collapses. It is not supposed to blow the whistle while the local game is still being played.
The scholarly paper argues that Philippine courts have not genuinely failed. They have never been given a proper chance to try (Diaz, 2026, Section IV-A).
The Sovereignty Hierarchy: Who Governs What?
The chart below shows how authority is supposed to flow, from the Filipino people, through their Constitution, through their laws, and only as a last resort outward to international institutions. The ICC’s warrant inverts that flow.
THE PROPER SOVEREIGNTY HIERARCHY
THE FILIPINO PEOPLE
Source of all authority (Article II, Sec. 1, “sovereignty resides in the people”)
THE 1987 CONSTITUTION
Supreme law, all laws, treaties, and actions must conform to it
PHILIPPINE COURTS & LAWS
Primary forum for accountability
ICC, LAST RESORT ONLY
Only when national courts genuinely fail (complementarity principle)
⚠ WHAT THE ICC IS DOING
Skipping Layers 2 and 3 and acting as primary forum
The Complementarity Betrayal
Here is where the story gets politically complicated, and most media have missed it entirely.
The Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding document, has a built-in protection for sovereign nations. It is called the complementarity principle. The rule is simple: the ICC can only step in when a nation’s own courts are “unwilling or unable genuinely” to investigate and prosecute. If the national courts are functioning, the ICC is supposed to stay out. The ICC is the backup option, not the first call.
The paper argues that complementarity was supposed to be a shield for the Philippines. Instead, the Marcos administration turned it into a weapon against its own political rival (Diaz, 2026, Section IV-B).
| STAGE | HOW IT SHOULD WORK | WHAT HAPPENED INSTEAD |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Alleged Crimes | Crimes are reported. The national government investigates using its own law enforcement and prosecutors. | No genuine domestic investigation targeting senior officials from the Duterte era was seriously pursued during Duterte’s presidency. |
| 2. ICC Preliminary Examination | ICC examines whether national courts are genuinely investigating. If yes, ICC stands down. | ICC found the Philippines “unable or unwilling” partly because the Philippine government cooperated in saying so, giving the ICC its own invitation. |
| 3. National Prosecution | National courts prosecute. ICC defers as long as genuine proceedings are underway. | Instead of building genuine domestic prosecution, the Marcos administration cooperated with the ICC — politically useful given the complete collapse of the UniTeam alliance by mid-2024, which turned the Marcos and Duterte camps from former partners into fierce rivals. |
| 4. ICC as Last Resort | ICC prosecutes only if national courts definitively and genuinely fail after a real attempt. | ICC became the first resort, with the Marcos government effectively converting complementarity from a sovereignty protection into a dynastic political tool (Diaz, 2026, Section IV-B). |
Key Argument in the Paper
The ICC as a Weapon in a Broken Alliance
To understand the political context of the ICC cooperation, you need to know recent Philippine political history. In the 2022 elections, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte ran together under a coalition known as “UniTeam,” billing themselves as a unified leadership that would end the country’s divisions. They won in a historic landslide, with Marcos as President and Sara Duterte as Vice President. The alliance was described at the time as a “marriage made in heaven” by Sen. Imee Marcos herself.
That marriage fell apart with remarkable speed. Cracks began showing in January 2024, when former President Rodrigo Duterte and his son, Davao Mayor Sebastian Duterte, publicly criticized President Marcos at a rally, calling him a drug addict and an incompetent president and demanding his resignation. By mid-2024, Sara Duterte had resigned from the Marcos cabinet, first as DepEd Secretary and then as vice chairperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict. By June 2024, Marcos told the press he had not spoken to Sara since she resigned. By late 2024 and into 2025, Sara Duterte reportedly made conditional remarks about retaliatory killings against Marcos, his wife First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and Speaker Martin Romualdez, which later became part of the impeachment proceedings followed. The alliance that delivered a landslide in 2022 had, by 2025, hardened into one of the most bitter political rifts in recent Philippine history.
The paper argues that the Marcos administration’s decision to cooperate with the ICC, including handing over Duterte himself to The Hague in March 2025 and now moving to arrest his closest ally Dela Rosa, cannot be separated from this collapse of the UniTeam. What was once a political partnership became a zero-sum factional war, and the ICC became the most powerful legal weapon available to one side of that war, dressed up in the language of international accountability.
This is not a defense of Duterte or Dela Rosa. It is an argument that when justice is weaponized in a factional political war between former allies, it is no longer justice. It is politics with a gavel.
How the UniTeam Fell Apart: A Quick Timeline
| When | What Happened |
|---|---|
| May 2022 | Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte win the presidential and vice presidential elections in a historic landslide under the “UniTeam” coalition. Sen. Imee Marcos calls it a “marriage made in heaven.” |
| January 2024 | First public cracks: former President Rodrigo Duterte and his son, Davao Mayor Sebastian Duterte, publicly criticize Marcos at a rally, calling him a drug addict and an incompetent president and demanding his resignation. |
| June 2024 | Sara Duterte’s Independence Day speech in Davao that UniTeam no longer exists. Marcos says he has not spoken to Sara since she handed him her resignation. |
| July 2024 | Sara Duterte resigns as DepEd Secretary and as NTF-Elcac vice chairperson. She distances herself from Marcos publicly, skipping his 3rd State of the Nation Address. |
| 2024–2025 | Sara Duterte reportedly made conditional remarks about retaliatory killings against Marcos, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and Speaker Romualdez, which later became part of the impeachment proceedings against her. |
| March 2025 | The Marcos government facilitates the surrender of former President Rodrigo Duterte to The Hague. Dela Rosa arrest attempt follows. Former allies are now using the ICC as a weapon against each other. |
The ICC’s Dirty Double Standard: Krasner’s “Organized Hypocrisy”
Before going further, there is a theory from international relations scholarship that every Filipino needs to understand before forming an opinion on the ICC. It is called “organized hypocrisy,” and it comes from Stanford political scientist Stephen Krasner. It explains, with academic precision, why the ICC does what it does to countries like the Philippines and not to countries like the United States.
Understanding the Theory
Stephen Krasner’s “Organized Hypocrisy”
What is it? Krasner’s concept, developed in his 1999 book Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, argues that sovereignty, the principle that all nations are equal and no outside power can interfere in another’s internal affairs, is regularly violated in practice, but nations maintain the fiction that it is universally respected. It is hypocrisy that is organized, meaning institutionalized and systematic rather than random.
In plain language: Powerful countries write the rules, but only enforce them against weaker countries. The rules about sovereignty get applied selectively, based on power, not principle.
How it applies to the ICC: The United States has killed thousands of civilians in drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan. It is not an ICC member, and no ICC investigation has ever touched it. China has allegedly detained over a million Uyghurs in what international bodies describe as mass human rights violations. It is not an ICC member, and no warrant has been issued. Russia invaded Ukraine. The ICC issued warrants, but Russia simply ignored them. India has its own contested record on civilian casualties in Kashmir. No ICC warrant.
The bottom line: Every ICC investigation or prosecution to date has targeted African nations or smaller developing-world states. The ICC’s record is not evidence of universal justice. It is evidence of Krasner’s organized hypocrisy: the rules apply to the weak (Krasner, 1999; Diaz, 2026, Section IV-C).
The ICC Double Standard: A Simple Comparison
The table below shows, side by side, how different countries are treated by the ICC, and why that pattern cannot be explained by the severity of the alleged violations alone.
| Country | ICC Member? | Alleged Violations | ICC Action | Why? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Philippines | Withdrew 2019 | Drug war killings, estimated 6,000 to 30,000 deaths | Warrants issued, arrest attempted | Small, politically divided nation with no major power backer willing to veto |
| United States | Never joined | Drone strikes killing thousands of civilians in multiple countries | No investigation | Global superpower; U.S. even passed law authorizing military action to free any American detained by ICC |
| China | Never joined | Mass detention of Uyghurs, alleged crimes against humanity | No investigation | Permanent UN Security Council member with veto power; global economic leverage |
| Russia | Withdrew 2016 | Invasion of Ukraine, civilian targeting, deportation of children | Warrants issued but ignored | Nuclear power; no mechanism to enforce without Russian cooperation |
| India | Never joined | Kashmir civilian casualties, AFSPA immunity for military | No investigation | Regional superpower, strategic partner of Western nations |
| Most ICC cases | African states | Varied | Full prosecution | Smaller, poorer nations without strategic backing from powerful states |
The pattern is not random. It tracks exactly what Krasner’s theory predicts: the ICC’s reach extends precisely as far as its targets lack the power to resist. The Philippines, a small archipelagic nation in Southeast Asia whose government is currently internally divided and politically compromised by a dynastic war, is the ideal target. Not because it committed the worst crimes. But because it is small enough that the ICC can actually enforce against it.
RA 9851: Surrender of Sovereignty, or an Exercise of It?
Those advocating Dela Rosa’s arrest frequently invoke Republic Act 9851 as their legal basis. RA 9851 is the Philippine law that defines and penalizes international crimes, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. Critics of the sovereignty argument say: “See? The Philippines already has domestic legislation addressing these crimes. RA 9851 proves the Philippines agreed to these norms. So what is the sovereignty objection?”
The paper turns this argument around completely. RA 9851 can be interpreted not as a surrender of sovereignty, but as an assertion of sovereign responsibility, the Philippines establishing its own domestic mechanisms to prosecute international crimes consistent with the complementarity principle of the Rome Statute (Diaz, 2026, Section IV-D).
Understanding the Law
Republic Act 9851: What It Actually Does
What RA 9851 Does
Defines war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide as crimes under Philippine law. Creates Philippine courts’ jurisdiction to try these offenses. Establishes penalties. Gives the Philippines its own domestic framework for accountability for international crimes.
What RA 9851 Does NOT Do
Does not make the ICC the automatic forum for prosecution. Does not override the Bill of Rights’ due process guarantees. Does not automatically waive constitutional due process protections, including those governing extradition, surrender, and judicial review under Article III. Does not require the Philippines to surrender citizens to foreign courts without constitutional safeguards. Does not remove Philippine sovereignty over these cases. Even Section 17, which allows surrender to an international tribunal, presupposes full compliance with applicable extradition laws, treaties, and constitutional safeguards, and is not a blanket automatic authorization for surrender.
The paper’s argument: RA 9851 is the Philippines saying “we will hold our own accountable, using our own law, in our own courts.” It is the opposite of a surrender to the ICC. Used correctly, RA 9851 is the mechanism by which Philippine courts can and should prosecute drug war crimes, without giving a foreign court authority over Filipino citizens. The question is whether the current administration has the political will to use it (Diaz, 2026, Section IV-D).
The Bottom Line
RA 9851 does not weaken the case for Philippine jurisdiction. It strengthens it.
By defining genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity as crimes under Philippine law, empowering Philippine courts to prosecute them, and establishing domestic penalties and procedures, Congress exercised sovereign authority rather than surrendered it. The law embodies the complementarity principle at its core: that accountability for international crimes should first rest with the State’s own legal system, unless that system is genuinely unwilling or unable to act.
Even Section 17 of RA 9851, which allows surrender to an international tribunal, does not create automatic ICC supremacy. Any such surrender must still comply with applicable extradition laws, treaties, and the full range of constitutional safeguards that protect every Filipino citizen, including Dela Rosa.
Properly understood, RA 9851 is the Philippines declaring: “We possess both the authority and the legal framework to hold our own accountable, under our own courts and our own Constitution. The Hague is not necessary. The Hague is not the answer.”
The Sovereignty Scorecard
After examining all four dimensions of the sovereignty argument: the constitutional commands, the complementarity betrayal, the organized hypocrisy of the ICC’s double standards, and the true meaning of RA 9851, the paper reaches a conclusion that is careful to separate the question of guilt from the question of forum.
| Sovereignty Question | Pro-ICC Argument | Sovereignty Counter-Argument | Paper’s Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Did the Constitution authorize ICC cooperation? | Philippines ratified Rome Statute in 2011, Senate approved | Philippines withdrew in 2019, also a constitutional act; post-withdrawal, the Constitution’s commands re-assert | Contested |
| Has complementarity been honored? | Philippine courts have not prosecuted, showing inability | Philippine courts were never genuinely given the opportunity; political will, not court capacity, is the issue | Favors Sovereignty |
| Is ICC treatment of Philippines consistent? | ICC applies international law consistently to all members | ICC has never prosecuted a P5 nation or major power; pattern fits Krasner’s organized hypocrisy exactly | Favors Sovereignty |
| Does RA 9851 require ICC surrender? | RA 9851 incorporates international criminal norms, showing Philippine commitment to ICC framework | RA 9851 is a domestic law creating Philippine court jurisdiction, not a mandate to surrender citizens to a foreign court | Favors Sovereignty |
| Is the ICC action politically neutral? | ICC is a court, not a political actor; warrants follow evidence | Timing of Marcos cooperation aligns with the collapse of the UniTeam alliance and the escalating factional war between the Marcos and Duterte camps; the ICC becomes a weapon in that conflict | Favors Sovereignty |
The Hard Truth This Post Is Making
The sovereignty argument is not a defense of the drug war. It is a defense of something more fundamental.
This post is not arguing that the drug war was right. It is not arguing that Dela Rosa is innocent. The paper this series is based on is explicit that the victims of the drug war matter, that the deaths were real, and that accountability is necessary.
The argument is this: even if Dela Rosa committed crimes, the right place to hold him accountable is not a court in the Netherlands, operating under contested jurisdiction, instrumentalized by a rival political dynasty, in a system that would never dare touch the United States, China, India, or Russia for equivalent or worse conduct. The right place is the Philippines, using Philippine law, in Philippine courts, before Filipino judges, with Filipino prosecutors, and with the testimony of Filipino victims whose communities will live with the verdict long after The Hague has moved on to its next case (Diaz, 2026, Section IV; Section XII).
Quick Recap: Four Things to Remember from This Post
01
The 1987 Constitution affirms that Philippine sovereignty remains paramount in foreign relations, that treaties and international commitments operate within the constitutional framework, and that treaties require Senate concurrence to become binding domestically.
02
The complementarity principle, the ICC’s built-in protection for sovereign nations, is argued in this paper to have been undermined by the political realities surrounding the case. When the Marcos and Duterte alliance collapsed in 2024, the Marcos administration’s cooperation with the ICC took on a markedly different political character, raising concerns that an international accountability mechanism was becoming entangled in domestic political conflict.
03
Krasner’s concept of organized hypocrisy helps explain criticisms frequently leveled against international institutions: weaker states often experience forms of scrutiny and pressure that more powerful states can more easily resist. The paper argues that geopolitical asymmetries inevitably shape how international justice is applied in practice.
04
RA 9851 is primarily a domestic accountability law, creating Philippine jurisdiction over international crimes and reinforcing the principle that Philippine courts retain primary responsibility for prosecution. The paper argues that the proper response to alleged drug war abuses is to strengthen and utilize Philippine legal institutions under RA 9851 rather than rely immediately on a foreign tribunal with contested jurisdiction.
■ ■ ■
Coming Up Next
Part 4: Power, Politics, and the ICC’s Dirty Secret
Part 3 argued the sovereignty case. Part 4 goes deeper into the political science and international relations. We examine Barnett and Finnemore’s theory of international organizations as autonomous political actors, look at how forum shopping works in international law, and apply Mearsheimer’s realist critique of international institutions to the ICC’s record in the Global South. If Part 3 made you question the ICC’s legitimacy, Part 4 will make you question whether international institutions can ever be truly neutral or whether they are always, in the end, instruments of great power politics.
Theological Meta-Framework
What does Scripture say about sovereignty, authority, and the right forum for justice?
The scholarly paper this series is based on operates within a theological meta-framework, meaning Scripture and Christian theology are not footnotes but the integrating architecture for all nine lenses of analysis. On the sovereignty questions in this post, the framework draws on Romans 13:1 and 4, which teaches that civil authority is established by God as a servant of justice within its proper domain, and Acts 25:10 to 12, in which Paul invokes his right as a Roman citizen to be tried in Rome rather than by an authority whose jurisdiction he contests.
The theological framework asks: when God established human government and its capacity for justice, did he design it to be local, accountable, and embedded in community, or remote, unaccountable, and disconnected from the victims it claims to serve? The paper answers that genuine justice, as a theological concept, requires the right authority in the right forum with the right accountability to the right community.
The full theological analysis integrating all nine lenses is in Part 7. But the sovereignty lens, more than any other, illustrates the theological point: the Filipino people, constituted as a sovereign people by God’s providential ordering of nations, have the right and the responsibility to deliver justice through their own institutions (Diaz, 2026, Theological Meta-Framework; Moo, 1996).
Full Scholarly Paper
The Hague Is Not The Way: Why the ICC’s Warrant Against Dela Rosa Is the Wrong Justice in the Wrong Place
A Comprehensive Multidisciplinary, Cross-Disciplinary, Interdisciplinary and Normative Transdisciplinary Scholarly Paper
62-page scholarly paper. The full paper includes complete analysis, the nine full disciplinary analyses, the complete theological meta-framework with full scriptural exegesis, Philippine law and case law citations, and complete references.
References
Barnett, M., & Finnemore, M. (2004). Rules for the world: International organizations in global politics. Cornell University Press.
Calvin, J. (1960). Institutes of the Christian religion (F. L. Battles, Trans.; J. T. McNeill, Ed.). Westminster Press. (Original work published 1559)
Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines. (1987). Articles II and VII. Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines.
Diaz, Z. (2026). The Hague Is Not The Way: Why the ICC’s Warrant Against Dela Rosa Is the Wrong Justice in the Wrong Place. [Unpublished scholarly paper].
International Criminal Court. (2023, June 24). Situation in the Republic of the Philippines: Decision on the Prosecutor’s request for authorization of an investigation (Appeals Chamber, Case No. ICC-01/21). https://www.icc-cpi.int
Krasner, S. D. (1999). Sovereignty: Organized hypocrisy. Princeton University Press.
Mearsheimer, J. J. (1994). The false promise of international institutions. International Security, 19(3), 5–49. https://doi.org/10.2307/2539078
Moo, D. J. (1996). The Epistle to the Romans. Eerdmans.
Republic Act No. 9851. (2009). Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide, and Other Crimes Against Humanity. Republic of the Philippines.
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. (1998). Articles 12, 17, 127. United Nations Treaty Series, Vol. 2187. https://www.icc-cpi.int/resource-library/documents/rs-eng.pdf
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