ICC falls, DU30 walks

Although the Rome Statute was drafted on the assumption that the International Criminal Court (ICC) would outlast the governments that resented it, the Trump administration is now preparing sanctions against the court as an institution.

Such a step would extend the measures already imposed on individual officials and, if carried through, could unsettle the custody of every person the tribunal currently holds.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the sanctions would forbid most transactions with the ICC once a grace period of six to seven months has lapsed, and because banks, software vendors, insurers and employers tend to sever ties long before a legal prohibition compels them to, the practical effect would be felt well ahead of the deadline.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Washington would dismantle the court “brick by brick, if necessary,” suggesting the aim is not to pressure the tribunal into changing course but to bring it to collapse.

That prospect matters to Filipinos because Rodrigo Duterte, the former President who is accused of having presided over a deadly war on drugs, sits among the detainees whose fate is tied to the court’s survival.

On 23 April 2026, a three-judge Pre-Trial Chamber unanimously confirmed three counts of crimes against humanity, namely, murder and attempted murder, against Duterte, citing at least 76 killings and two attempted killings between 2013 and 2018, with some of the victims being children.

The trial is scheduled to begin on 30 November 2026, meaning the proceedings would open well within the window in which sanctions, once imposed, would begin to bite.

The legal logic behind a possible release is easier to state than to dismiss. Pre-trial detention is justified only as a step toward adjudication, and where the forum that ordered the detention can no longer function, defense counsel would argue that continued confinement has lost its lawful purpose.

A court that cannot pay its judges, retain its lawyers, maintain its detention arrangements, and process its filings cannot guarantee a trial within a reasonable time, and although the judges would be reluctant to declare their own incapacity, a defendant’s petition for interim release would put the question squarely before them, whereupon the burden falls on the court to show that fair proceedings remain possible.

A detainee who has been convicted but has not exhausted his appeal stands on similar ground, since he may contend that a judgment cannot be final where the appellate machinery has been rendered ineffective.

The roster of those affected shows how far the consequences could reach.

The court’s detention facility is hosted by the Netherlands, whose government has every reason to keep serious offenders in custody, and the Rome Statute’s state parties, including several that have been vocal in defending the tribunal, could adopt blocking measures, arrange alternative financing, or move certain functions beyond the reach of American jurisdiction.

Judges, moreover, are not inclined to release accused persons in the face of grave charges merely because an external power has made the court’s work harder, and they may conclude that sanctions-inflicted hardship cannot be invoked by the accused as though it were a defect in the case against them.

Whether sanctions of this scope can in fact be enforced against a treaty organization seated in Europe is also a question that remains untested.

The danger lies less in a sudden release of those detained than in a slow erosion of the conditions on which detention rests, because each month that the court is starved of services makes a speedy trial less credible and each delay strengthens the hand of the defense.

For Duterte, whose supporters have long insisted the proceedings were political, US sanctions offer a ready argument that the tribunal could no longer deliver a fair process.

For the families of those he is accused of killing, it would raise the prospect that the only forum which reached him may be dismantled before it could render judgment.

Those who brought Duterte before the international tribunal should therefore consider, if they have not already done so, what remedies to take, since cases against the former president remain at the complaint/preliminary investigation stage.

None have progressed to a formal trial in court, since the focus was his surrender to The Hague, a strategy that may backfire if the ICC is eventually shut down.