THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Following his arrest at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte (FPRRD) arrived in the Netherlands where he is to face charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over his deadly 'war on drugs'.

Duterte led the Philippines from 2016 to 2022 and during his presidency, he is presumably responsable for the killing of 12,000 to 30,000 victims, some of them small-time drug dealers and users and many innocents.
And now to be indicted before ICC, the 79-year-old could become the first Asian former head of state to go on trial before the international court composed of judicial representatives fromn125 countries that are States Parties to the Rome Statute. Of these, 33 are African states, 19 Asia-Pacific states, 20 from Eastern Europe, 28 from Latin American and the Caribbean states, and 25 from Western European and other countries.

It is worth to note that it is very uncommon for former heads of state to face international justice (just three of them have). But, why is this?

The truth is that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has limited power when it comes to jurisdiction. This is because they only have power in countries that recognize it.

That means that a lot of wanted criminals by the ICC can get away with their crimes so long as they don’t set foot in the territories that are signatories to the court.

This results in most state leaders avoiding justice, powerful as they are. However, that is not always the case.
In the ICC's 22-year history, only three state leaders have sat in The Hague before the ICC.

In 2016 former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo became the first former head of state to go on trial before the ICC. He faced charges of crimes against humanity related to post-election violence over his refusal to accept defeat at the polls in 2010 following a decade in power.

After a three-year trial, Gbagbo was acquitted in 2019 with the judges ruling that the prosecution's case linking the African leader to the post-election bloodshed that killed some 3,000 people as "exceptionally weak."
Another state leader whose appearance in The Hague didn’t end in a conviction was former Kenyan president’s Uhuru Kenyatta, who sat before the ICC in a pre-trial hearing in 2014. He had five charges of crimes against humanity for provoking ethnic tensions before he became president. When he came into power, however, the prosecution withdrew the charges and blamed the decision on political interference with witnesses.

Finally, the most recent ICC case is the trial against former Kosovo president Hashim Thaçi, which started in April, 2023 and is still ongoing. DdConsidered a hero by compatriots for being the leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the 1998-1999 insurgency against Serbian rule that led to independence, he’s being charged for suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity during the conflict.