The Hague as a Mirror: Duterte’s War on Drugs and the Global Politics of Dehumanization

This essay examines the arrest and detention of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, positioning it as a moment of symbolic rupture—but not yet of substantive reckoning. Drawing on peace studies, transitional justice, and dehumanization theory, the essay argues that Duterte’s war on drugs was not merely a misguided crime-control policy, but a calculated project of state violence rooted in class warfare, necropolitics, and systemic exclusion. While the ICC trial is a vital step toward accountability, it is limited by its focus on individual guilt and juridical process. True and lasting peace, the essay contends, demands rehumanization: a cultural, political, and economic transformation that restores dignity to communities criminalized by the state. Through this lens, the Philippine drug war is read as part of a global architecture of control in which the poor and minoritized are rendered disposable under the guise of public order. The essay calls for peacebuilding frameworks that move beyond legalism to confront the deeper structures of inequality and disposability—structures that courts alone cannot dismantle.