Keypoints:
- US sanctions deepen confrontation with ICC
- Africa’s ICC relationship remains deeply contested
- Global justice faces a credibility test
THE US government has launched what it calls a campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court, accusing the ICC of violating American sovereignty and claiming the authority to prosecute American servicemen and officials.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has promised a ‘whole-of-government response’ designed to disable the Court’s ability to operate, target Americans or otherwise threaten US sovereignty. The US is even urging ICC member states to withdraw.
This is not simply an argument about one court in The Hague. It is an argument about whether the world still believes in international justice.
A direct challenge to the Court
The ICC has responded by accusing the US of a ‘flagrant attack’ on the independence of an impartial judicial institution. The Court says nine of its 18 judges, both deputy prosecutors, its former Prosecutor and a staff member have been sanctioned by Washington.
Its message is defiant: it will continue its work. But the question that should be directed not only at Washington, but at every government, is much more uncomfortable: is the world serious about international justice?
Because the credibility of the international system is being eroded from both directions.
The US is attacking the Court because it rejects its jurisdiction over Americans. At the same time, several African governments are abandoning or preparing to abandon the institution after years of complaining that the ICC disproportionately targeted their continent.
Russia, China and several other major powers have never accepted the Court’s jurisdiction in the first place.
So where exactly does that leave international justice?
Africa’s complicated relationship with the ICC
In all this, the Africa question cannot be ignored. The ICC’s defenders are right to challenge the familiar accusation that the Court was created simply to prosecute Africans.
But the history does not support such a simplistic argument. Indeed, some of the ICC’s most important African cases came to The Hague because African governments themselves asked it to intervene.
Uganda referred the situation in its country to the ICC in 2004. The Democratic Republic of the Congo did the same that year. The Central African Republic referred its situation in 2004 and again in 2014. Mali referred its situation in 2012.
These were not countries dragged unwillingly before an imperial court in Europe. Their own governments sought international intervention, generally because national justice mechanisms were unable or unwilling to deal effectively with alleged mass atrocities.
Other African situations reached the ICC through the UN Security Council: Darfur and Libya. Then there were situations initiated by the Prosecutor, including Kenya and Burundi, which became the first country to leave the ICC in 2017 after years of confrontation with the Court.
For years, African governments were accused of resisting international accountability. Now some of those same governments are effectively asking: if international justice is not genuinely universal, why should Africa continue to participate?
The Court is not beyond criticism
There is another uncomfortable truth.
The ICC is not beyond criticism simply because Washington is attacking it.
The Court has made mistakes. Some investigations have been painfully slow. Its dependence on governments to arrest suspects leaves it vulnerable. Its relationship with the UN Security Council creates obvious political tensions. Some cases have collapsed. Others have taken years to reach meaningful conclusions.
The Court itself acknowledges shortcomings. Those weaknesses should be addressed.
But there is a fundamental difference between reforming international justice and destroying it.
Reform is different from destruction
The ICC is based on the principle of complementarity.
National courts have the primary responsibility for dealing with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The ICC is intended to intervene when national authorities are unwilling or genuinely unable to provide justice.
It is therefore difficult to sustain the argument that the Court has simply declared itself the supreme government of the world.
The US has never ratified the Rome Statute. It is therefore entirely legitimate for Washington to question whether an international court should have jurisdiction over American nationals.
But that argument becomes much less convincing when it turns into an attempt to prevent the Court from investigating anyone.
A country can reject the jurisdiction of a court without demanding that the court cease to exist.
It can dispute a prosecution without threatening the institution itself.
And it can defend its citizens without asking the rest of the world to abandon the principle of international criminal accountability.
When power decides the limits of law
This is why the US campaign matters so much. The world’s most powerful military and economic power is effectively telling the international system that there are limits to the reach of international law when American interests are involved.
The phrase ‘rules-based international order’ has been repeated so often that it risks becoming meaningless.
Rules only work when those with the power to break them choose not to.
That is the uncomfortable lesson of the ICC crisis.
The question the world cannot avoid
There is now a dangerous question hanging over the international justice system: what happens when the most powerful countries decide that international law is for everyone else?
If international law applies only to governments that lack the military, economic or diplomatic power to resist it, then it is not international law.
It is the equivalent of the Wild West.
Read the September–October 2026 edition of Africa Briefing Magazine for more analysis of Africa’s place in a rapidly changing global order
