a.

Overview/ background
1. Rodrigo Duterte, a former president of the Philippines, began a war on drugs in June 2016 that
has led to the extrajudicial executions of hundreds of accused drug users and dealers around the
nation. According to John Gershman, a Philippine politics specialist, the Philippine president
views drug use and trafficking as "significant barriers to the country's economic and social
advancement." One of Duterte's main domestic programs is the drug war, which is an expansion
of the initiatives he first put in place as mayor of Davao, Philippines, earlier in his political career.
The United States halted poverty funding to the Philippines in December 2016 after expressing
worry over Duterte's drug crackdown.

2. Thousands of people in the Philippines have been killed since President Rodrigo Duterte
launched his “war on drugs” on June 30, 2016, the day he took office. Among those who died
have been dozens of children under age 18 who were either specifically targeted or were
inadvertently shot during anti-drug raids, what authorities have called “collateral damage.”
Philippine children’s rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) put the total number of child
fatalities at 101 from July 2016 through December 2018, both targeted and killed as bystanders.
More deaths of children have been reported in the media in 2019 and 2020.

3. More broadly, official figures from the Philippine National Police and the Philippine Drug
Enforcement Agency put the number of “drug war” casualties at 5,601 deaths as of January 31,
2020. In virtually every case, police claimed they killed a drug seller or user during a raid after
the suspect resisted arrest and fought back. The national Commission on Human Rights and
domestic human rights groups believe many thousands more – estimated at more than 27,000 –
have been killed by the police, agents of the police, or unidentified assailants.

4. According to President Duterte and his spokespersons insist that the ICC does not have
jurisdiction in the Philippines because, among other claims, the country’s signing of the ICC
treaty in 2011 was not published in the official gazette — a preposterous and irrelevant claim
that is undermined by Manila’s own act of withdrawal from the statute.

b. Issue concern
 1. The Philippines' undeniably defective and ineffective criminal justice system, in which
cases take years to resolve and courts are unable to manage cases, has contributed to
the brutality of the drug war. The International Criminal Court (ICC) offers to intervene,
but the Philippines administration refuses to work with it, claiming that the ICC has no
jurisdiction in the nation because the late president Duterte withdrew from it.

2. in any event, the Philippines claims that the court has no jurisdiction over the country,
following Duterte’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute, the treaty that governs the ICC,
in March 2019. But court prosecutors claim that they have jurisdiction over crimes
committed prior to that point. Former ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in late
2020 that a preliminary probe had found “a reasonable basis to believe that the crime
against humanity of murder has been committed on the territory of the Philippines”
between July 1, 2016, when Duterte came to office, and the country’s withdrawal from
the Rome Statute on March 16, 2019.

3. Whatever the legal merits of the ICC’s argument, it will be virtually impossible for an
investigation to proceed in the face of concerted opposition from the Philippine
government. The Duterte administration said that ICC investigators would be barred
from entering the country, and it’s hard to see them being granted access under Marcos
– especially given that the investigation concerns a political ally (whatever Duterte’s
personal misgivings about Marcos).

4. It was always unlikely that a figure like Marcos,  the son of the dictator Ferdinand E.
Marcos and the likely beneficiary of his family’s world-beating pilfering of the national
accounts, would embrace the organs of international criminal justice. But the roadblock
demonstrates the challenges that the ICC has always faced in breaching the ramparts of
national sovereignty, especially of nations with the willingness and capacity to resist it.

c. analysis and resolution

What does utilitarianism mean in ethics?

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that determines right from wrong by focusing on outcomes. It is a form
of consequentialism. Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the
greatest good for the greatest number.
Ethical formalism is a type of ethical theory which defines moral judgments in terms of their logical form
(e.g., as "laws" or "universal prescriptions") rather than their content (e.g., as judgments about what
actions will best promote human well-being).

Can you sue the President of the Philippines?

Section 15. The President shall be immune from suit during his tenure. Thereafter, no suit whatsoever
shall lie for official acts done by him or by others pursuant to his specific orders during his tenure.