International Justice Day, commemorated each year on July 17 to mark the adoption of the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court (ICC), arrives this year under a dark cloud.
Rather than celebrating nearly a quarter-century of the world's only permanent court mandated to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression, legal scholars and former international prosecutors warn the court is confronting one of the most serious challenges in its history.
They point to escalating political pressure, divisions among member states and sanctions imposed by the US.
"The court is facing one of the gravest crises in its 24-year history," Sergey Vasiliev, a professor of international law at the Open University of the Netherlands, told Anadolu.
On Monday, the Trump administration announced a campaign aimed at dismantling what it described as a threat by the ICC to its sovereignty. The restrictions include possible new sanctions, visa restrictions and diplomatic pressure on allies.
"The court is wounded. Its prosecutors and many judges are under crippling US sanctions," veteran war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody told Anadolu.
The US State Department said the campaign would employ a “whole-of-government response to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty."
The statement argued that the court has claimed authority to prosecute Americans despite Washington never ratifying the Rome Statute and said past US administrations have rejected the court's jurisdiction over American citizens.
In an opinion piece published Monday in The Wall Street Journal, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration would "dismantle the ICC — brick by brick, if necessary," claiming the court had evolved into a supranational body seeking to override the authority of sovereign states.
The latest confrontation marks one of the sharpest breaks in US-ICC relations since the court became operational in 2002.
Although Washington never joined the Rome Statute, successive Democratic and Republican administrations have, at various times, cooperated with the court.
Former ICC prosecutor Alex Whiting mentioned how the US contributed to referring the Darfur war crimes case to the court in 2005 as well as the Libya case in 2011.
After the Russia-Ukraine war began in 2022, the US supported the ICC’s investigations into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
"The Trump administration's attack on the court is both unfounded and contrary to US interests," he said.
Whiting, a professor at Harvard Law School, argued that the court poses no threat to the US.
"It is also the only international court that exists to prosecute grave international crimes. There is no Plan B. Attacking the court both undermines the world's efforts to hold perpetrators of international crimes accountable and distances us further from important allies that are members of the court."
Marco Longobardo, a reader in international law at the University of Westminster, said Rubio's statement misrepresented how the ICC works.
"The ICC can prosecute US citizens only if they commit international crimes on the territory of a state party. This is not a violation of US sovereignty: Just as any state has the right to prosecute crimes committed on its territory, even if they are committed by foreigners, so too can that state delegate such prosecution to an international court."
Longobardo said the prosecution of citizens of non-member states for crimes committed on the territory of member states is the mechanism that allowed the ICC to investigate Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged crimes in Ukraine, a move welcomed by the US administration.
"This unprecedented attack on the ICC is also an attack on the 125 member states, which must protect the court's judicial function," he added.
Many legal experts view the current crisis as inseparable from the ICC's decision to issue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024 over alleged war crimes committed during Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.
The court also opened an investigation in March 2020 into potential crimes by US troops in Afghanistan. While the ICC has deprioritized that probe since 2021, it has not formally closed the case.
Experts said the Gaza warrants marked an unprecedented moment in international criminal law.
"The warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant were a watershed event in the history of international justice," Brody said, highlighting that ICC prosecutors had never, in more than two decades, sought the indictment of Western officials or their allies.
Brody said the moment the ICC charged Netanyahu and Gallant over Gaza, the US moved to strangle it.
"The court is not being punished for its failures. It is being punished for its evenhandedness."
Last year, Washington imposed sanctions on ICC officials, including judges and the court's chief prosecutor Karim Khan, including asset freezes and travel bans.
Brody called the sanctions unprecedented and said the issue was not about sovereignty but about impunity.
"The US is treating international judges the way it treats drug traffickers and terrorists."
He added that Israel engaged in a decade-long campaign of hacking and intimidation against the ICC, including the Mossad chief's personal pressure on the previous prosecutor.
Experts argued that ICC member states have failed to mount an effective response to sanctions targeting court officials.
"Countries that believe in the rule of law must enact practical and legislative measures, including so-called 'blocking statutes' that prohibit compliance with US sanctions and thereby protect companies and individuals from their effects," Brody told Anadolu.
Legal scholar Vasiliev said the ICC's states parties had done far too little to shield the court from the unlawful coercive measures imposed by the Trump administration and to safeguard its judicial and prosecutorial independence – protections they would almost certainly have put in place sooner had such threats been directed at their own domestic judges and prosecutors.
Whiting said the court is facing difficult days, but "it will not break and it will not disappear."
"All international institutions and agreements are suffering today as the US and other states in the world turn away from international approaches to world problems."
He said the ICC is particularly vulnerable because it depends on state cooperation to conduct its investigations.
"But it is still prosecuting important cases, including that of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, and it represents a significant commitment on the part of the 125 countries that are states parties."
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