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From accession to action: The Philippines cybercrime strategy’s progress

The Philippine cybercrime landscape has evolved tremendously over the years, and this is thanks to our accession to the Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest Convention). Everything regarding cybercrime in the Philippines – from legal framework, national strategies, to training sustainability started with the Budapest Convention, which provided the Philippines with basis to enact its own comprehensive law on cybercrime composed of substantive, procedural, and international cooperation provisions and rules for the investigation and adjudication of cybercrime cases.

After acceding to the Budapest Convention, the Philippines foster greater cooperation with currently 75 other Parties on matters of legal and other forms of assistance. We became an active participant in the Cybercrime Convention Committee and we contributed to the negotiations of the Second Additional Protocol to make sure that its further development remains consistent with our laws, rules, and regulations.

The provision of the Budapest Convention allowing technical cooperation programs to its members proved to be of great importance and help to us. In fact, even during the time that the Philippines was a mere observer to the Budapest Convention, it has, in partnership with the C-PROC Office under GLACY and GLACY+ Projects, gained the status of a priority country for capacity building programs. As such, we started the development of capacity building strategies, with technical trainings at the forefront, which are continuously conducted with a goal of capacitating all members of the criminal justice system for an effective and efficient cybercrime enforcement in line with international best practices.

These programs also enabled the Philippine authorities to establish its own team of judicial trainers, who played crucial roles towards the attainment of a sustainable cybercrime and electronic evidence training strategy in our jurisdiction. The opportunity for collaboration between the Council of Europe and different institutions in the Philippines like the Philippine Judicial Academy and the Department of Justice – Office of Cybercrime, which continues to capacitate judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement authorities, on cybercrime and electronic evidence, cannot be understated as it paved the way for a training strategy that is efficient and unceasing.

The Philippines continues to closely collaborate under the GLACY-e project and looks forward to accomplishing its National Cybercrime Strategy, implementing its Regional Hub Status, and acceding to the Second Additional Protocol of the Budapest Convention through the same.

Contributor: Jose Midas P. Marquez, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Philippines, Philippines, 2024.