As Washington sanctions the International Criminal Court,
No Peace Without Justice calls on States Parties to protect the Court they created.
ROME / BRUSSELS, Friday, 9 October 2026 — Today the United States sanctioned the International Criminal Court. Until now, Washington had sanctioned the people who serve the Court and those who help it: the Prosecutor and both Deputy Prosecutors, the President of the Court and other judges, a candidate in this year’s judicial elections, a United Nations Special Rapporteur and three Palestinian human rights organisations. Now it has sanctioned the institution itself.
US citizens, residents and companies may no longer deal with the Court, and any bank or company anywhere that does so risks losing access to US companies and services, and being sanctioned themselves. The intent is explicit: to cut the Court off from its financial and insurance services, its payroll and the software it runs on, so that it can no longer work. On 13 July the State Department announced a “whole-of-government response to systematically disable” the Court, and the Secretary of State promised to take it apart “brick by brick.”
The aim is to put the nationals of the United States and its allies, Israel foremost, beyond the Court’s reach. The President was plainer on 31 July: the effort, in his words, was to “defend Bibi and various other people.”
Every State has the right to decide whether to join this Court. The United States chose not to, and it does not owe the Court anything. That gives it no right to seek to dismantle a court that 125 other States chose to establish, and no say over treaties and institutions created by other States. Every State has the sovereign right to investigate and prosecute crimes committed on its own territory or by its own nationals, and a sovereign right to freely join with other States to do so together. That is what the 125 States Parties did when they created the Court, and it is not contingent on the approval of the United States, or of anyone else.
In 2022 the current Secretary of State, then a Senator, co-sponsored a resolution backing the Court’s jurisdiction over Russians accused of crimes in Ukraine. Washington supported the rule when it reached Russians. It opposes it now that it reaches Israeli leaders, and on the premise that it might reach Americans.
The campaign against the Court is a campaign for impunity for atrocities and for double standards, but it is also a campaign against other countries’ sovereign right to do together what each of them can do on their own.
Washington wages it in two ways. It exploits the world’s reliance on US banks and digital services, which is what today’s sanctions do. And it presses States to leave the Court by tying aid, visas and security cooperation to their membership. On 23 July, according to Chad’s own account, US officials raised Chad’s membership of the Court in the same call as travel restrictions on Chadian citizens. Four days later, Chad notified its withdrawal. That is coercion.
Sanctioning judges and prosecutors for their decisions is retaliation against officials of the Court, an offence against the administration of justice under the Rome Statute. Every State Party must make it a crime under its own law when it is committed on its territory or by its nationals.
The Court has kept working through every round of sanctions since February 2025. Its judges have kept sitting, its investigations into war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, from Darfur to Ukraine to Palestine, have continued, and in 2025 the Philippines surrendered a former head of state to it. The three Palestinian organisations sanctioned for working with the Court lost their accounts, their funds and their software within days, and kept working. Today’s sanctions aim to break that resolve by cutting off the Court’s money. They will fail if States Parties make sure the Court can keep paying its staff, protecting its witnesses and serving the victims who have waited years for justice.
States can resist too. Uganda refused a written US ultimatum to leave the Court, Senegal pledged support to the Court and to the NGOs working with it, Benin has withstood repeated calls, visits and letters, and Hungary’s parliament halted its withdrawal days before it would have taken effect.
But explicit collective support has been shrinking: 88 States joined a statement in the Court’s defence in 2020, 79 in February 2025, 59 in November 2025. At the ICC’s own Assembly of States Parties in December 2025, only Ireland named the United States. The European Commission has refused to activate existing blocking legislation that would mitigate the effects of the sanctions.
The States that created this Court can keep it working. They have the laws, the regulators and the votes to do it. The European Union has its Blocking Statute, Canada its Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act, the United Kingdom its Protection of Trading Interests Act 1980, Australia its Foreign Proceedings (Excess of Jurisdiction) Act 1984, Mexico its Act to Protect Trade and Investment from Foreign Norms that Contravene International Law, Argentina its Law No. 24,871 and South Africa its Protection of Businesses Act, among others. Until now they have not used them. They need to start today.
The Call
We call on States Parties to condemn the US sanctions explicitly and at the highest political level, as an unlawful attack on an independent court and on their sovereign right to exercise jurisdiction together over crimes committed on their territory or by their nationals. This is no time for silence.
But words alone will not keep the Court running. We also call on States Parties, individually and together, and without waiting for one another, to:
- Use the blocking laws that already exist, and apply them in full. The European Commission should extend the EU Blocking Statute (Council Regulation 2271/96) to these sanctions, so that EU companies are forbidden to comply with them and can recover damages. Other States Parties should apply their own blocking laws in full, and those without such laws should adopt them. Protection must cover the Court, its officials, the UN Special Rapporteur and civil society alike.
- Keep the Court’s accounts and services open. Direct your regulators to tell banks, insurers and technology providers that these sanctions have no legal effect in your jurisdiction, and that they may not refuse services out of excess caution. The Netherlands, as host State, has the first responsibility and should not be left to carry it alone.
- Protect civil society on the same terms as the Court. Every diplomatic step, legal assurance and funding measure taken for the Court must also cover the organisations and human rights defenders sanctioned for working with it.
- Keep cooperating fully with the Court. Fund it, cooperate with it, and arrest and surrender everyone subject to its warrants, without exception or delay. Refuse any pressure to change a vote, a position or a priority in the Assembly or any other body of the Rome Statute system.
- Challenge the sanctions in law. Support the court challenges brought in the United States by those under sanctions, and pursue every avenue under international law, including an advisory opinion from, or a case before, the International Court of Justice.
- Reduce dependence on US services. Invest in banking, payment and digital infrastructure that does not depend on a single State, for the Court and for States Parties themselves.
No Peace Without Justice campaigned for this Court before it existed and has defended it ever since. One hundred and twenty-five States chose to establish it. Now they must choose to defend it, even against the United States.
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About No Peace Without Justice
No Peace Without Justice (Non c’è Pace Senza Giustizia) is an international non-profit organisation working for the protection of human rights, democracy, the rule of law and international justice. Founded in 1993 in the tradition of Emma Bonino and Marco Pannella, it campaigned for the creation of the International Criminal Court and has defended the Court and the Rome Statute system ever since. It holds consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). www.npwj.org
Read also the CICC Statement on ICC Sanctions
https://www.coalitionfortheicc.org/news/US-institutional-sanctions-against-icc
