To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity
— Former South African president Nelson Mandela

MAYPAJO, Caloocan City — Many of us may not have a clear picture of what the International Criminal Court (ICC) truly is, so we're going to feature what it is all about as an intergovernmental organization that investigates and prosecutes individuals for crimes against humanity.
In actuality. the ICC is seated in The Hague in the Netherlands. It was established in 2002 as the first and only permanent international court with jurisduction to prosecute indivuduals with regards to war crimes and violations of the universal rights of peoples from all nations.
Since its establishment, the ICC has performed exceptionally abd one of the latest achievement it has done is the issuance of acwarrant of arrest against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu asxwell Hamas leaders over war crimes in the conflict in Gaza.
This makes Netanyahu the fourth world leader against whom the ICC has ussued an arrest warrant.
Prior to this, the ICC issued a warrant for the first time against Sudan's former president Omar al-Bashir in 2009, accusing the African leader of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region where an estimated 300,000 people were reportedly killed and more than two million mire displaced from their homes.
Bashir and some of his allies were jailed in Sudan after a popular uprising in 2019, but were never sent to The Hague. According to the Sudanese army, Bashir was moved from prison to a military hospital in April last year.
This was followed by the issuance of an arrest warrant against former Libyan president Moammar Gaddafi in 2011, along with his son Saif al-Islam. Gaddafi, however, was captured and shot in October in the same year and days after his father's death, Saif al-Islam was caught by fighters from Zintan, where he remained in captivity until his release under an amnesty law in 2017.
A third warrant of arrest was issued by the ICC against Russian president Vladimir Putin in March last year, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from the Ukraine. The Kremlin, however, called the move meaningless and has repeatedly denied accusations that its forces have committed atrocities during the invasion of its neighboring country.
In an odd turn if events, the current ICC prosecutor Karim Khan was Gaddafi's lawyer at his litigation before the international court for over a year until he withdrew in 2018. Khan became the ICC's lead prosecutor in 2021.
Another well-known figure in the ICC's 'most wanted list', although not a world leader, is Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony, who is the court's longest standing fugitive whose warrant of arrest for 36 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity was issued in 2005.
In view of these, we now wonder if former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte would now become the fifth individual and world leader to face investigation and litigation before the ICC. We guess that this we have to await but we hope this would happen soon so that the issue of human rights violations and extrajudicial killings (EJKs) committed on Duterte's command would finally be put to rest

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