Reliable sources indicate that the United States (US) plans to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an institution in the coming weeks. This follows a series of designations, first against the ICC Prosecutor, Deputy Prosecutors, judges, Palestinian NGOs, and also the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory. Now is the time for states, civil society, academics, journalists, and all those committed to international justice and the rule of law to stand up and do everything possible to defend the Court and organisations supporting its work.
Civil society from around the world urgently calls on States Parties to the Rome Statute to do everything in their power to stop the proposed US sanctions against the ICC, an independent judicial institution with a mandate to confront impunity for the gravest crimes known to humanity. Sanctions against the ICC, taken unilaterally by a non-State Party, amount to an all-out assault on a global court backed by 125 States Parties and relied on by the international community to ensure accountability for atrocity crimes. Such sanctions would leave countless victims abandoned by obstructing a last resort to justice, weaponising the global financial system to choke the Court’s work, and entrenching double standards where power and politics dictate which survivors deserve justice.
