The International Criminal Court’s humiliation at the United Nations

The International Criminal Court is in trouble. This is of course nothing new. The Court has been haemorrhaging legitimacy, credibility and support, having been caught up in allegations of selectivity, racism and professional incompetence virtually since it came into being. The most recent iceberg the bewigged and begowned helmsmen of this erratic Titanic have deliberately steered into the path of is the United States.

The United States believes that the ICC has gone rogue and for understandable reasons. The Court is formed by a treaty signed by member states, known as States Parties. It has nevertheless illegally attempted to extend ICC “jurisdiction” to other states who are not party to the treaty, something which violates the principle at the heart of international customary law that a treaty cannot bind non-parties. Despite the United States and Israel not being signatories to the ICC, the Court has nonetheless issued indictments for Israeli politicians and had previously sought to begin proceedings against American service personnel regarding alleged actions in Afghanistan.

The United States recently indicated its continuing displeasure with the ICC by imposing significant new economic sanctions on the Court and its personnel by way of an existing 2025 Executive Order, which had declared the ICC to be “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”.

These American sanctions merely add to the Court’s recent woes. After two years of prevarication, for example, the Court eventually had to fire its latest Prosecutor following allegations of sexual misconduct. Unease with the Court’s direction of travel is evident: ICC members from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific have recently withdrawn from the Court. What is remarkable is that the most withering criticism of the Court has come from those closest to it and from its ideological supporters within the human rights industry. In 2019, for example, the first four presidents of the Assembly of States Parties, the Court’s governing body, publicly admitted that “the International Criminal Court needs fixing”. An independent expert review subsequently recommended 384 fixes: few appear to have been made.

Amnesty International has noted the ICC’s “questionable credibility”, subsequently warning that “the court’s legitimacy risks being eroded by an increasingly selective approach to justice”, and Human Rights Watch has noted its “legitimacy challenges” and warned of “concerns of politicization of the court’s work”. The pro-ICC Economist has described ICC prosecutions as “bumbling,” “chaotic” and “near-farcical.” The New York Times reported that many legal experts agree that key ICC legal cases have “degenerated into something more resembling a circus, if not an outright farce.” Sympathetic legal bloggers have described its proceedings as “slapstick comedy.”

In an attempt to rally the herd following the new US sanctions, the ICC metropolitans beamed themselves into the United Nations General Assembly on 2 November by way of a virtual appearance by the President of the ICC, Judge Tomoko Akane, to deliver a report on the Court’s activities from 1 August 2025 to 31 July 2026. Akane holds the Japanese seat on the ICC bench, first bought back in 2007, when, in return for a huge contribution to the ICC budget that year, Japan’s first judge, someone without any legal qualifications or training whatsoever, was overwhelmingly elected by vote-trading (the polite term for vote-rigging) to the ICC bench.

Unsurprisingly, the UN General Assembly’s professional metropolitans adopted a resolution welcoming Akane’s report on its activities together with a resolution condemning threats, attacks and interference against the body and its personnel. The breakdown of voting on the resolution within ICC States Parties was very interesting. Only 89 out of 123 ICC States Parties voted for the resolution. 34 States Parties either voted against the resolution or simply ignored it.  More than a quarter of the Court’s own members would not back a resolution condemning criticism of, and measures taken against, the Court. To no-one’s surprise, the 25 members of the Western European and Others Group within the ICC, essentially the owners, funders and controllers of the Court, voted 100 percent in favour of the resolution. They would, wouldn’t they? The Eastern European Group (always keen to play nicely with the European Union) voted 85 percent in favour. Of the African Group (conscious of EU threats to withhold economic aid and subsidies) 67 percent, 22 States Parties, voted for the resolution. Of the 17 States Parties making up the Asia-Pacific Group within the ICC only 59 percent supported the resolution, and within the Latin American and Caribbean Group of 28 States Parties, only 15 members voted for the resolution. In a significant blow to the Court, one of the Caribbean countries abstaining in the vote was Trinidad and Tobago.

Things are bad for the ICC when Trinidad and Tobago starts to withdraw its support. The country has considerable history with the ICC. The former President and Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, A.N.R. Robinson, presented the United Nations General Assembly Resolution that kick-started the process which led to the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court in Rome in 1998. This in turn led to the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the Court opening its doors in 2002, upon ratification by 60 states. Trinidad and Tobago signed the Rome Statute on 23 March 1999 and ratified on 6 April 1999, becoming the 2nd State Party. They are clearly not so keen now.

All in all, the result was humiliating for the European Union and the non-governmental organisations at the heart of the International Criminal Court.  The European Union and its helot states had aggressively whipped the vote, badgering, bribing and blackmailing ICC States Parties to vote for the resolution, threatening to cut off trade deals and economic aid.  In the event, more than a quarter of the Court’s own members refused to support what is all too obviously nothing more than a discredited and rapidly failing international non-governmental organisation.