Trump Administration, Accused of Crimes Against Humanity, Sanctions Entire ICC

Trump administration officials, facing numerous allegations of war crimes in its actions ranging from Iran to Cuba, issued punishing sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday that threaten the future of the entire body and its work to hold war criminals and genocidaires to account.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, fresh off of his ultra-nationalist speech at the Acropolis this week, said in a video announcing the sanctions that the U.S. is banning “transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us.”

The sanctions are slated to cut the court off from using U.S.-based financial services, companies, and even the U.S. dollar after six months — a move that is ruinous for the court’s officials, as the global financial system is highly dependent on the U.S. dollar.

The administration announced the sanctions just hours after Navi Pillay, who was formerly the UN’s human rights chief and an ICC judge, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Last year, Pillay led the independent UN commission that declared genocide in Gaza. The prize announcement incensed President Donald Trump, who reposted a message saying that the Nobel Committee “shamed itself beyond repair” on Truth Social.

The ICC warned that the sanctions are unprecedented, and called on its 125 member states to fight back against the U.S.’s actions.

“It is an attempt to obstruct the course of justice and to prevent the Court from doing what it was created to do. It is an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order which strikes at the simple principle that no one stands above the law,” the ICC said in a statement. “Future generations, and above all the victims of mass atrocities, will ask how we responded when an institution created to protect them came under attack.”

The U.S. has already sanctioned 13 other ICC judges and prosecutors in recent months, including numerous officials who have worked on the ICC’s prosecution of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Trump administration has also previously demanded that the ICC formally end its investigation into U.S. soldier wrongdoing in the U.S.’s invasion of Afghanistan that was already previously put on pause.

Rubio said that the move is about supposedly protecting U.S. sovereignty and shielding American officials and allies from being targeted by the ICC. “Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC,” Rubio said.

Similar claims have previously been debunked by legal experts as an attempt by Rubio to use rhetorical scare tactics to paper over Trump officials’ real desire in dismantling the ICC: impunity for themselves and violent allies like Israel. Trump administration officials have faced numerous accusations of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law, for their massacres of civilians across numerous fronts; ICE raids and mass deportation campaign; and transfers of weapons to countries committing or implicated in war crimes.

Rather than threaten U.S. sovereignty, the sanctions on the ICC actually threaten the sovereignty of many states and peoples who have been victimized by powerful war criminals with no other method of recourse, critics said.

“By sanctioning the entire International Criminal Court, the Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to the most important development in international justice in half a century,” said Omar Shakir, executive director for Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). “U.S. sanctions threaten to shut the last viable road to justice for millions of victims of serious crimes, from Gaza and Sudan to Afghanistan and Ukraine.”

DAWN is one of several organizations that have filed lawsuits against previous U.S. sanctions against the ICC. The group called on the European Union to use its Blocking Statute, as it has for previous U.S. sanctions, to prohibit the EU from complying with the sanctions. The group also called on the ICC to prosecute Trump, Rubio, and other U.S. officials for the sanctions, which DAWN Advocacy Associate Isabelle Hayslip said are a crime under the ICC’s founding statute.

A group of eight countries, including the U.K., Germany, and France, said that they “regret and strongly disagree with” the sanctions in a joint statement, but did not commit to any action against them.

European leaders have faced criticism for their inaction in the face of the U.S.’s campaigns to dismantle the ICC and international law at large. “If European countries & other signatories to the International Criminal Court have any self-respect, they’d sanction Rubio & Trump for obstructing investigations of Netanyahu’s war crimes,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) last month.

The Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), an international group of thousands of civil society groups, called on countries party to the ICC to “mount a coordinated and collective response” to the sanctions. It also called for the EU to activate its blocking statute against the measure.

“States Parties cannot allow coercive measures imposed by a non-State Party to determine whether victims can seek justice,” said Alison Smith, executive director of CICC.

“Words of solidarity are not enough,” added CICC Advocacy Coordinator Zoé Paris.