The International Criminal Court’s dark underbelly

The dismissal last month of the International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, for “serious misconduct and a serious breach of duty”, following allegations involving a junior lawyer in his office, has cast another chink of light into the shockingly toxic work environment within the Court that has persisted for decades.

The ICC was established by the Rome Statute on 17 July 1998 following the five-week-long United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court. Based in The Hague, Netherlands, the Court opened its doors, following ratification by 60 states, on 1 July 2002.  It is a treaty-based international organisation governed by the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) — its signatories — with a mandate to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression, when and if its signatory states are unwilling or unable to prosecute those crimes domestically.

That then is the theory claimed of the Court by its founders, enablers, supporters and apologists. It is similar to the statutory blurb some poor salesman is obliged to read out to someone thinking of buying insurance, entering into mobile phone contracts or changing their utilities supplier. The reality has been shambolic. The ICC has been in trouble for quite some time. Commentators have noted that “It is now ordinary to read that the ICC is ‘failing’ or ‘in crisis’”. While much of the focus on its difficulties has been on the Court’s public shortcomings, commentators have increasingly made the point that the ICC’s ability “to deliver justice” and enforce good governance is also inextricably linked to its internal integrity and governance.

The reality is that the Court has manifestly failed in both respects, externally and internally. Even diehard supporters of the ICC have grudgingly charted its decline over the past two decades. Its ability to function externally, to deliver justice, has been derailed by systemic prosecutorial misconduct, repeated evidentiary problems, courtroom fiascos and lacklustre judging by often woefully underqualified judges with little to no real-time courtroom experience. It has become increasingly clear that not only did the prosecutors and judges not know what they were doing, but they were actually making things up as they went along (what could possibly go wrong?). In short, proceedings were summed up even by sympathetic legal bloggers as “slapstick comedy” and by critics as “dangerous theater”. By 2019, seventeen years into its existence, things had got so bad that four former Presidents of the Assembly of States Parties publicly announced that “[t]he International Criminal Court needs fixing”. The ASP subsequently commissioned an Independent Expert Review (IER) of the Court, which reported back on 30 September 2020 with 384 recommendations to address failings at the Court, of which 76 were highlighted as needing to be urgently “prioritised”.

At face value, six years on, little if anything was done to “fix” the Court.

What has become clear is that the Court is equally dysfunctional outside of the courtroom. There are more than 22 core legal texts, administrative issuances, codes of conduct, and related policies as well as an Independent Oversight Mechanism (IOM) meant to deal with allegations against elected and employed Court officials. They don’t appear to have had much effect. One such document was the ICC’s 2006 strategic plan which proclaimed as one of its three central goals to establish the ICC as a model of public administration. The reality was very different, with ICC staff members stating that the first ICC chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, ran the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) “like a police state”, with a “culture of fear” that was “very real” and “sapping.”

A Forum for International Criminal and Humanitarian Law (FICHL) report written by three of the ICC’s most important initial employees revealed that a “sense of fear” and “intimidation” within the Office of the Prosecutor under the newly installed first Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo had set in within a year of the Court becoming operational. Twenty-two top staff members in the OTP left the court within a few years. FICHL notes in passing that “Several government officials and leaders of non-governmental organizations knew about the problems already from late 2003 onwards.”

The rot continued to set in under Moreno-Ocampo. It is also well-known that he refused to adopt a code of conduct during his term of office. In a secret 15 September 2008 letter to the OTP, Human Rights Watch somewhat euphemistically noted a “failure to develop a sufficiently supportive work environment”. As early as 2008, the Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice project also called for action to “address serious issues of misconduct, including fraud, corruption, waste, sexual harassment, exploitation, and abuse committed by ICC staff in the course of their work, especially in the field”. This NGO, a key enabler of the Court, stated that “it would be timely for the Court to undertake a review of its internal complaints procedures to ensure they are sufficiently robust, are transparent, provide adequate protection for staff, are an effective mechanism for accountability, uphold the rights of employees and ensure the positive reputation and good standing of the Court as a whole.”

Nothing happened.

Ten years later, the Independent Expert Review confirmed that the Court was still a toxic workplace environment. The Experts placed on record “a culture of fear” at the ICC, particularly within the Office of the Prosecutor, citing “bullying, harassment (including sexual harassment), and other unacceptable behaviours”, “predatory behaviour”, “a number of accounts of sexual harassment, notably uninvited and unwanted sexual advances from more senior male staff to their female subordinates” and a culture “adversarial and implicitly discriminatory against women.” It also noted the “perceived impunity of senior and elected officials.”

Pro-ICC legal scholars have noted “the extraordinarily poor (and expensive) track record of the ICC Registry [the Court’s administrative component] in being successfully sued by its own employees for unfair dismissal”, and in a dig at the Court’s poor judicial track record, that “The body with jurisdiction over such claims, the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization, could be at risk of deciding more cases about the ICC than the ICC resolves cases of its own.”

The Court, for example, ran headlong into #MeToo issues both before and after the IER report. The ICC has only had three Chief Prosecutors to date: Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Fatou Bensouda and Karim Khan. Two of the three, Moreno-Ocampo and Khan, have been caught up in sexual misconduct scandals. (It should also be noted, for the record, that workplace misconduct—including sexual harassment—was also widely described as systemic during Bensouda’s time in office.)

The first Prosecutor, Moreno-Ocampo, was accused of sexual coercion involving a female journalist on a work trip to South Africa in 2005. In October 2006, Christian Palme, a Swedish ICC staff member who was then serving as Communications Director in the OTP, citing Regulation 119.1 of the Regulations of the Court and Rule 23 of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence of the Court submitted a 52-page internal staff complaint alleging that on 28 March 2005 Ocampo had  “committed serious misconduct . . . by committing the crime of rape, or sexual assault, or sexual coercion, or sexual abuse” against a female South African reporter, stating it was grounds for Moreno-Ocampo’s dismissal. He found it “deplorable that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, one of the highest legal officials in the world, performs acts such as those of 28 March 2005, when he forced or coerced a woman into sexual intercourse, in a manner that would most likely have merited a prison term in most highly developed countries of the world. I am not willing to live with the knowledge of this crime being unreported and the perpetrator being able to continue working in high office.”

There was a cursory internal investigation, which dismissed the complaint, and Palme was ordered to destroy any and all evidence he had submitted with his complaint, including an audio-recording of the alleged victim outlining what had happened. He was subsequently suspended and then summarily sacked by Moreno-Ocampo personally on 16 March 2007 for “serious misconduct”. An internal ICC appeal found for Palme, but Moreno-Ocampo overrode it. The whistleblower took his case to the ILO Tribunal which found that he had been wrongfully dismissed and he received a six-figure sum by way of compensation for material damages, moral damages and costs. The tribunal found there was “no basis for concluding that [Palme] did not believe on reasonable grounds the truth of what he put in his internal complaint”. The tribunal also found that Moreno-Ocampo’s decision to dismiss Palme personally had been a breach of process: “It is a fundamental aspect of due process that a person should not take a decision in a matter in which he or she has a personal interest.”

Media revelations in 2017 laid bare further details of Ocampo’s deeply questionable personal conduct, during and after his time at the ICC, which led to more litigation. The British government found it necessary at the 2018 ASP Assembly to refer to this new scandal surrounding Ocampo, “welcom[ing] the steps taken by the Prosecutor [Bensouda] to investigate the media allegations surrounding the former Prosecutor that surfaced twelve months ago” and noted that the “Court is in danger of spending more money on internal litigation, including litigation on salaries, than on victims”. It was a stinging rebuke from an avid supporter of the Court.

The latest – and until July 2026 incumbent – Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, was sacked following an extended leave of absence since May 2025 following accusations, which first emerged in May 2024, of sexual coercion of a female staff member. A senior ICC official, Thomas Lynch, reported the alleged misconduct to Court officials. An initial investigation by the Independent Oversight Mechanism was quickly closed without investigators ever speaking with Khan. In a clear echo of the investigation of Ocampo, an ICC staff member described the IOM investigation process as “incredibly botched”. There was considerable staff pushback. In a parallel of the 2008 scandal, one Court employee stated: “We’re an accountability mechanism with zero accountability ourselves. On what planet does this type of allegation surface against the head of the institution and you have such a feeble response?”

Under pressure, in mid-November 2024, the Assembly of State Parties played a game of pass the parcel. The United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services was tasked with investigations allegations that Karim Khan both sexually abused a staff member and retaliated against individuals within the OTP who reported the incident or urged a serious response. After a year of pressure Khan eventually stood aside and took a leave of absence pending the conclusion of a protracted process which ended in his dismissal.

Concerns about endemic misconduct within the Court were meant to have been addressed by the creation of the Independent Oversight Mechanism by the Assembly of States Parties in November 2009 as “an independent oversight mechanism for inspection, evaluation and investigation of the Court, in order to enhance its efficiency”, albeit one headed by an ICC employee, Saklaine Hedaraly. Hedaraly admitted that when he joined the Court “some staff openly scoffed at the idea that elected officials could ever be held accountable”. Clearly in no great hurry, the Assembly got around to finalising the Operational mandate of the IOM in November 2013, but the body had in effect been neutered by the Office of the Prosecutor. It eventually became effectively operational in 2017. Seen as toothless, the 2020 IER report noted euphemistically that “[t]he IOM does not as yet enjoy the full confidence and trust of all staff”, and that ICC staff feared reprisals if official complaints were made.

The fiercely pro-ICC Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) warned back in 2019 of the need to assess sexual misconduct as part of the “high moral character” requirement in electing the ICC Prosecutor: “The position of ICC prosecutor is emblematic not only of the court, but of the global fight against impunity more broadly. Now more than ever, our experts noted, leaders have to be accountable to their most vulnerable staff.” OSJI noted in 2020 that “the ASP has failed to make vetting a reality for this election”: Karim Khan was elected.

In 2021-2022 the Ad Hoc External Advisory Panel on Work Culture for the Office of the Prosecutor, chaired by Ibrahim Pam, investigated continuing allegations of misconduct within the Court. Two years after the IER findings and recommendations, the advisory panel’s 2022 142-page report, entitled Individual Allegations of Harassment, Sexual Harassment, Discrimination, Retaliation, and Other Serious Misconduct in the Office of the Prosecutor, made for grim reading, outlining allegations of “Serious Misconduct” against 12 then-current and former OTP personnel, the vast majority of whom were senior staff members.

In November 2023, the Independent Oversight Mechanism received 46 potential allegations of possible misconduct and initiated a detailed review of 35 cases, of which over 20 concerned allegations of harassment, including sexual harassment and/or abuse of authority.  Between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024, the IOM received 43 reports of possible misconduct and initiated a detailed review of 25 cases. IOM’s 2024–2025 Annual Report highlighted “an unprecedented increase of reports of alleged misconduct” including 76 new allegations of misconduct in one year, a 77% increase compared to last year, with 53 advancing to investigations, in addition to 20 cases carried over from the previous reporting period, underscoring the scale and persistence of serious workplace-misconduct problems at the Court.

In December 2024, four years after the IER findings and recommendations, an ICC Staff Union Council representative speaking on behalf of 27 Staff Council representatives, who in their turn were said to represent more than 1000 ICC staff members at the Headquarters and country offices, noted that the recommendations that had been made to assist in rebuilding trust and reshaping working culture at the Court were “unfortunately far from being implemented” and that “some aspects of workplace culture have been further affected, and this concerns notably trust in internal justice mechanisms of the Court.” The Staff Union Council noted that “instances of misconduct such as harassment and abuse of authority are still allegedly happening at the Court, including by elected officials.” A Staff Union Council survey “called for due process and principles of fairness to be followed in any internal or external investigation of misconduct, and that the same standards should apply to staff and elected officials equally, during investigation and sanctions stage . . . Staff told us that these recent events have affected their morale, wellbeing and productivity”.

The shocking toxicity of the International Criminal Court workplace, particularly at senior levels, clearly continues. For all the “steps” the Court claims to have taken to address the manifest failings of the Court, the International Federation for Human Rights reported in 2025 that “mistrust, harassment, and weak accountability persist.”

The 2025 ICC Staff Engagement Survey reported that fewer than half the Court’s staff would recommend the ICC as a place to work and less than a third believed the ICC has an open and honest culture. Within the Office of the Prosecutor less than a quarter of employees felt safe reporting instances of discrimination, harassment, or abuse of authority, without fear of retaliation. The Survey noted: “These findings point to deep systemic challenges in trust and leadership across the Court”. Of the 21 per cent of staff who indicated they did experience prohibited conduct, only 28 per cent reported it, and of those 28 per cent who reported a problem, 58 per cent believed that “the problem is continuing” and 27 per cent stated that “no action was taken”, while 17 per cent indicated that “the problem has got worse”. In addition, 65 per cent of staff who indicated they experienced prohibited conduct replied that they had not reported a problem they had experienced for fear of negative consequences and/or retaliation.

In December 2025 the independent JusticeInfo.Net confirmed that there were still “deep systemic challenges in trust and leadership across the Court”. That is to say, a continuing “human resources” nightmare.

There is a wide and widening disconnect between the International Criminal Court’s foundational mission pursuing good governance, ending impunity and combating gender violence, and its appalling behaviour and practices both in the courtroom and offices of its quarter-billion-dollar headquarters. The ICC was heralded as a Court that would be a champion for gender justice and the victims of sexual violence. It is particularly ironic that the Office of the Prosecutor publicly proclaims the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based crimes, and to enhancing access to justice for victims of these crimes as a key strategic goal. In 2021 Karim Khan pledged to strengthen the Office of the Prosecutor’s commitment to seek accountability for gender-based crimes “wherever they may arise” – except, it seemed, in his own office, or anywhere else in the ICC franchise.