LAST October, the Supreme Court approved the new Rules on Extradition Proceedings (A.M. No. 22-03-29-SC) dated 8 April 2025. These Rules lay down the procedure when a foreign State asks the Philippines to turn over a person so that State can investigate or punish them under its own criminal laws.
This has sparked a crucial question: if the International Criminal Court (ICC) issues an arrest warrant against Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, can he be automatically sent to The Hague?
Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin is correct that there would be no “automatic transfer” of Senator Bato under the new Rules—but not for the reason he gave.
As the Supreme Court Spokesperson correctly defines:
Extradition is the transfer of a person from the Philippines to a foreign State. The ICC is not a State but an international criminal tribunal, so the new Rules, by their own terms, do not govern surrender to it.
The true legal basis is found in existing Philippine law and in generally accepted principles of international law, which our Constitution expressly adopts as part of the law of the land (Article II, Section 2).
While Article II speaks in terms of “principles and policies,” the Supreme Court in Tañada v. Angara (G.R. No. 118295, 1997) and in Secretary of Justice v. Lantion (G.R. No. 139465, 2000) recognized the doctrine of incorporation: customary international law applies in the Philippines without need of a new statute.
In Pangilinan v. Cayetano (G.R. Nos. 238875 & 239483, 2021), the Court clarified that “generally accepted principles of international law” include both custom and general principles of law. Custom arises from consistent State practice carried out with a sense of legal obligation (opinio juris).
Article 59 of the Rome Statute – the ICC’s founding treaty – reflects such a rule of customary law. It requires that a person arrested on an ICC warrant be brought promptly before a “competent judicial authority” of the custodial State.
That local court must determine three things under its own law: that the warrant applies to that person, that the arrest followed due process, and that the person’s rights have been respected.
The travaux préparatoires (preparatory works) of the Rome Statute shows that this mirrors Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which requires anyone arrested on a criminal charge to be brought promptly before the courts.
Similar safeguards were later echoed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and were applied in the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals and in the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals.
Our own Republic Act No. 9851 – the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide, and Other Crimes Against Humanity – recognizes customary international law, decisions of international courts, and human-rights instruments as authoritative guides in interpreting international criminal law.
All told, if an ICC warrant is issued against Senator Bato, there can still be no “automatic” surrender; not because our Extradition Rules block it, but because international and domestic law require that any arrest first pass through Philippine courts applying these standards. The same rules should have been applied to former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte.
We are not a mere courier for The Hague. As a custodial State, we are duty-bound to balance international accountability with the constitutional rights of every person on our soil.