The International Criminal Court days were always numbered

The International Criminal Court was created to put powerful figures beyond the reach of politics. Instead, its biggest cases have exposed just how powerless it can be when politics gets in the way.

From defeated dictators to sitting presidents

The International Criminal Court was once associated with the prosecution of defeated leaders such as Serbia’s Slobodan Milošević and Liberia’s Charles Taylor.

But the Court eventually took a far more ambitious step, issuing arrest warrants for sitting leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On paper, this looked like the ICC finally demonstrating that nobody was above international law.

In reality, it may have exposed the Court's greatest weakness.

An arrest warrant is only as powerful as the governments prepared to enforce it.

Netanyahu exposed the fault line

The Western response to the warrants for Putin and Netanyahu could hardly have been more different.

The 2023 warrant for Putin was broadly welcomed across Western capitals. But the 2024 warrant for Netanyahu split European governments and exposed a fundamental problem: international justice becomes considerably less straightforward when the accused is an ally.

Some governments have backed the warrant, while others have questioned whether placing Israel's prime minister on the same legal footing as terrorist organisations undermines the Court's credibility.

The result is an institution demanding universal respect while receiving anything but universal political support.

Trump declares war on the Court

Donald Trump's administration has gone much further.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described the ICC's actions as part of an unacceptable campaign against America and its allies and has vowed to dismantle the institution “brick by brick”.

The administration has targeted ICC officials with sanctions, asset freezes and visa restrictions while attempting to pressure countries into turning their backs on the Court.

Several African states have also begun the process of withdrawing, accusing the ICC of becoming an instrument of Western or “neocolonial” justice.

That is potentially devastating for an institution whose authority depends on international cooperation.

Arrest warrants nobody intends to enforce

The fundamental problem is brutally simple.

Who is actually going to arrest Netanyahu or Putin?

The answer appears to be: almost nobody.

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has openly acknowledged the reality of realpolitik, saying practical considerations can prevail over ethical ones.

That is precisely the problem confronting the ICC.

A court can issue as many warrants as it likes, but if governments refuse to arrest the people named in them, the warrants become political statements rather than functioning instruments of justice.

The history of Omar al-Bashir demonstrates the problem.

The former Sudanese president was indicted over the Darfur conflict in 2009 and remained a free man for another decade. When he visited Turkey in 2017, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reportedly mocked the idea that Turkey would hand him over.

Interestingly, Erdoğan has strongly supported the ICC's warrant for Netanyahu.

The contradiction tells its own story.

Governments support international justice when it suits their interests.

Even ICC members have ignored it

The problem does not stop with non-member states.

Italy demonstrated the Court's weakness in spectacular fashion when Libyan military officer Osama Elmasry Njeem was arrested in Turin under an ICC warrant in January 2025.

He was subsequently released and returned to Libya without the Court being properly notified.

For an institution supposedly responsible for international criminal justice, that is an embarrassing reality.

If even member states can effectively ignore their obligations, the ICC's authority becomes increasingly theoretical.

The charge of selective justice

Then comes the most damaging accusation of all: selective justice.

The ICC cannot simply prosecute every alleged atrocity on the planet. Its jurisdiction is restricted, particularly where crimes occur in countries that have not joined the Rome Statute.

That leaves some of the world's most powerful states outside its reach.

China is not an ICC member. Nor are Russia, Israel, India, Pakistan or the United States.

That means the Court's claim to represent universal international justice has always had a rather large hole in it.

The contrast is particularly striking when considering conflicts such as Syria, Xinjiang and Iraq, where enormous numbers of civilians have died but the ICC has faced serious jurisdictional obstacles.

The Netanyahu case made the contradiction unavoidable

The Netanyahu case brought those contradictions into the open.

The ICC has asserted jurisdiction through the territorial status of Palestine, which is a party to the Rome Statute.

But that legal argument remains deeply contested, as does the question of whether Israel's own judicial system was given sufficient opportunity to investigate alleged crimes under the principle of complementarity.

That principle matters because the ICC was supposed to be a court of last resort, stepping in when national justice systems genuinely cannot or will not act.

Israel has a functioning judicial system, and there has been significant domestic debate over investigations into the Gaza war.

That does not mean Israeli leaders should be immune from accountability.

Quite the opposite.

It means accountability must be credible enough to survive political scrutiny.

The ICC's original dream meets realpolitik

And this is where the ICC's fundamental problem lies.

The Court was born in the optimistic aftermath of the Cold War, when many believed international institutions could increasingly rise above traditional power politics.

But the world did not remain that way.

Russia, China and the United States remain major powers operating according to their own strategic interests. Governments routinely put national security, alliances and geopolitical calculations ahead of international institutions.

The ICC was built around the idea that international law could constrain power.

The modern world continues to demonstrate that power often constrains international law.

The Court may have exposed its own weakness

The Netanyahu warrant did not create the ICC's problems.

It exposed them.

The Court has discovered that issuing dramatic warrants against sitting leaders can generate headlines, but without the political cooperation necessary to enforce them, those warrants can ultimately highlight the institution's impotence.

That does not mean war crimes should go unpunished.

It means the ICC may not be the mechanism capable of delivering the universal justice it once promised.

Political pressure, sanctions, bilateral agreements and national prosecutions may sometimes achieve more than an international court whose defendants can simply remain inside countries unwilling to arrest them.

The uncomfortable conclusion is that the ICC may have been built for a world that no longer exists.

Its days may not have been numbered because international justice was a bad idea — but because international justice was never going to escape international politics.

SOURCE

ICC High‑Profile Prisoners / Convicted Individuals

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

• Thomas Lubanga Dyilo

• Germain Katanga

• Bosco Ntaganda (convicted, serving 30 years)

Uganda (Lord’s Resistance Army)

• Dominic Ongwen (convicted, serving sentence)

Mali (Islamist armed groups)

• Ahmad al‑Faqi al‑Mahdi

• Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz (convicted 2024)

Sudan / Darfur

• Ali Muhammad Ali Abd‑Al‑Rahman (Ali Kushayb)

• Abd‑Al‑Rahman’s co‑accused in Janjaweed cases (various, but Kushayb is the major one actually in custody)

Just need to add Putin and Netanyahu.......job done.