One source of our national pride happened 60 years ago this year: The election of former Supreme Court Chief Justice César Bengzon to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Nicknamed the world court, the ICJ is one of the major organs of the United Nation. It is tasked with settling legal disputes among UN member-states.

Up until today, Bengzon holds the distinction of being the first and only Filipino and Southeast Asian to have served as ICJ judge. He served in the ICJ from 1967 to 1976.

Another Filipino, former Supreme Court Associate Justice Florentino Feliciano, was elected member and later president of the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization in 1995 to 2001.

After the Philippines joined the International Criminal Court, we should not forget that we nominated Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago to be an ICC judge. She topped the election in the first round of voting in 2011. She was poised to make history as the first Asian woman from a developing country to be become a judge of the ICC, but sickness compelled her to resign in 2014 even before she could assume the position.

Raul Pangalangan of the University of the Philippines College of Law would later be elected as ICC judge, serving from 2015 to 2021. Although the Duterte regime withdrew the Philippines from the ICC in March 2018, he continued in office until May 2021 to finish ongoing proceedings.

Another Filipino elected to a international court was the veteran human rights lawyer Romeo T. Capulong. He was elected by the UN in 2001 to be a judge ad litem of the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, an ad hoc UN court established to prosecute war crimes in the Yugoslav wars and to try the perpetrators.

The election of these Filipino legal eagles to international courts is a pride of the Philippines, Filipino lawyers, and even ordinary Filipinos. They show that Filipinos can be good and fair jurists and judges in the international legal arena.

Recalling these Filipino international judges is more important now, when there’s a pernicious lie claiming the ICC is a “foreign court” when it is transparently not. The ICJ, ICC, and ICTY are not foreign courts, but international courts whose judges are elected by UN member-states (in the case of the ICJ and ICTY) and by states-parties (in the case of the ICC).

Both the ICJ and ICC are based in The Hague, the Netherlands. But nobody calls them Dutch courts.

In fact, there’s no Dutch judge in the 18 current judges of the ICC. There has never been a Dutch judge in the ICC.

This is a major problem of those who defame the ICC as supposedly a foreign court. They also attempt to airbrush and erase the election of Filipinos to international courts.

The Philippines did not nominate and campaign for them to be judges of other countries’ national or local courts. Why would the Philippines do that, when we ourselves won’t allow a non-Filipino to sit as a judge in any of our courts? But as a member of the community of nations, and when we were still a state-party to the Rome Statute, a national of the Philippines may be nominated and be elected as a judge of the ICJ or the ICC. Or any international court or tribunal where we are a member.

We should perhaps also note that the ICC has also accredited Filipino lawyers in its List of Counsels. Joel Butuyan and Gilbert Andres were appointed as common legal representatives of victims. They have been outstanding in giving voice to victims in the pre-trial stage of the case against former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte. Assistants to Counsel Kristina Conti and Ross Tugade have helped in no small way in explaining to the public the ICC processes and procedures, and in keeping us focused on the cause of attaining justice for crimes against humanity pinned on Duterte. (Interestingly, Duterte and common-law partner Honeylet have apparently refused to hire a former presidential spokesperson as defense counsel or even as member of the defense team although he is in the ICC List of Counsel. It was widely reported that Honeylet helped arrive at the choice of new defense counsel, Peter Haynes, as replacement to Nicholas Kaufman who decided to resign.)

Despite the maddening events this week, our consolation (and national achievement) is that the case of Filipino victims of extrajudicial killings would soon reach the ICC trial stage. Duterte is already there, with a new defense counsel. Other respondents may join him later.

We also watch in remembrance of judges Bengzon, Feliciano, Pangalangan, Defensor-Santiago, Capulong, and the next Filipinos who would serve in international courts — not foreign courts — in the future.