“Like a faulty firework that had been expected to spectacularly light up the sky of international justice, the Court has not quite left the ground, let alone ignited. There has, however, been just enough smoke, heat and fizzle to make things interesting”
The International Criminal Court is now in its 24th year. Like a faulty firework that had been expected to spectacularly light up the sky of international justice, the Court has not quite left the ground, let alone ignited. There has, however, been just enough smoke, heat and fizzle to make things interesting, even though we are looking at what presently appears to be a squib.
This is not from a lack of effort. To date, the Office of the Prosecutor has opened 17 separate investigatory situations on four different continents. Indictments have been issued against 70 individuals. Just six months ago, former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte became the first non-African defendant to appear before the Court. The 125 States Parties to the Rome Statute have invested more than €2.5 billion to fund the Court, with the annual budget now approaching €200 million. For all this, the Prosecutor has secured convictions against just seven individuals on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. There have been four acquittals, and there are presently 33 living “fugitives”, including Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Joseph Kony.
Absent a UN Security Council referral, the ICC has jurisdiction only over the territory and nationals of states that have ratified the Rome Statute. This has, at times, severely restricted the action the Court can take: for example, it has no jurisdiction over some of the more egregious international crimes that have been committed since 2002, including those that took place in the civil wars in Syria and Yemen; in Iraq; in the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia; and in the Xinjiang region of China.
Most of the blame lies with states. The ICC has no police force, so it relies entirely on the willingness of states to arrest those indicted by the Court, and many states – even those that are ICC members – continue to hesitate to do so, especially when the fugitive is a sitting head of state or government. In 2025, both Putin and Netanyahu have been welcomed as honoured visitors in ICC member states: Mongolia in the case of Putin, and Hungary in the case of Netanyahu.
So while there is plenty of blame to be shared for the ICC’s uninspiring – or, at best, mediocre – record of results, the most pressing crisis at the Court is, paradoxically, being imposed on it not for its limited reach, but rather for what it has actively chosen to do.
In late 2024, a panel of ICC Judges issued arrest warrants against Israeli leaders for crimes against humanity and war crimes allegedly committed in the war in Gaza. The Biden administration aggressively objected through diplomatic channels, but the new Trump administration has taken a more proactive (some might say rash) approach. Under Trump, the US has imposed sanctions on the Chief Prosecutor, both Deputy Prosecutors, and six of the Court’s 18 Judges. These sanctions are wide-ranging and prohibit any US national from providing any goods or services to those sanctioned. Because the ICC computer data and communications systems use cloud and email services operated by Microsoft, Prosecutors and Judges have been locked out of these systems; the affected individuals have also been denied access to their Google services accounts. It remains unclear to what degree these actions will degrade the ICC’s capacities in the short- and long-term.
The Court is also losing member states faster than it is gaining them. In September 2025, the military rulers of the neighbouring states of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger jointly announced that they would be withdrawing from the Court in order to “reassert sovereignty”. These states have, along with other African states, alleged that the ICC is a neoimperialist project designed by the states of Europe to keep Africa and its leaders subjugated to Western authority. Duterte’s recent arrest and appearance before the Court, mentioned above, has only further underscored how Africa-centric the Court’s previous accomplishments have been. Hungary has also given notice that it intends to withdraw from the Court, arguing that the ICC has succumbed to overpoliticisation.
For these and other reasons, the ICC is in crisis; it is unlikely to collapse or cease operations, but it has far to go before we can regard it as anything approaching a dazzling success.