The United States Imposes Additional Sanctions on International Criminal Court

Author: Nayan Bansal

October 21, 2026

HRRC condemns the recent US institutional sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC). We stand in support of the ICC and its mission to provide accountability from individuals responsible for grave human rights violations. We demand that the US immediately revoke the imposed sanctions.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands [Image credit: Tony Webster/Flickr]

On October 9th, the United States declared additional sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC). The US Department of State issued a statement proclaiming that “the United States is sanctioning the International Criminal Court. We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate.” The Department cited that the ICC has been working against the spirit of US citizens and that the “globalist” experts in the Court are prosecuting US citizens even though the US is not a member of the Court. The statement further declared that “Either the ICC will end its threats [on US citizens], or we will end the ICC.” . The factsheet accompanying the official statement announced the specific “additional actions to defend U.S. sovereignty and neutralize the threat posed by the ICC.” These actions are part of the anti-ICC campaign the US has undertaken  since February 2025. 

On February 6, 2025, US President Donald Trump signed  Executive Order 14203 (EO 14203) to impose sanctions on the ICC, on the charge that the Court “has engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America” and Israel, a close ally of the US. EO 14203 mentioned that the ICC has no jurisdiction either in America or in Israel to issue arrest warrants. The recent sanctions are issued on the basis of Section 1(a)(ii)(A) of EO 14203 that sanctions any person who has  “directly engaged in any effort by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute a protected person without consent of that person's country of nationality.” The US also accused two officials of the ICC, President of the ICC, Tomoko Akane of Japan, and ICC Senior Trial Lawyer, Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal, for similar charges of assault on state sovereignty. The Trump administration is attacking the ICC for its pursuits of non-member states and their citizens. The administration initially condemned the ICC in 2024, after arrest warrants were issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes in Gaza. The ICC has also investigated the actions of US soldiers in Afghanistan. The administration contends that the ICC is operating outside of its jurisdiction since neither the US nor Israel are member states. The ICC can, however, prosecute crimes committed in territories of member states, even if committed by non-member states and their citizens.

Also on October 9, the ICC immediately rejected the US sanctions, claiming they are an attempt to obstruct the ICC's ability to seek justice and “an assault on the rule of law”. The Court called on its 125 member states to help protect the future of the ICC. The ICC’s Bureau of Assembly of States Parties also regretted the institutional sanctions by the US on the Court and emphasized that the campaign of the Trump administration against the ICC is an attempt to impede the Court's exercise of rule of law and accountability. The Bureau also called for the immediate revocation of these sanctions on the Court. The new sanctions were imposed hours after a former judge of the ICC, Navi Pillay, won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. Her most recent work was on the committee that concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. 

Various legal and human rights organisations endorsed the ICC’s criticism of the US sanctions. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the announcement of new sanctions, calling them “a serious blow to our collective pursuit of international criminal justice of which the ICC is a key pillar.” Human Rights Watch called the US administration’s decision “an unprecedented assault on global justice and the rule of law”. Erika Guevara Rosas, the senior director of Amnesty international, has also condemned these recent sanctions and said that “President Trump’s sanctions are designed to isolate and ultimately destroy the International Criminal Court” and “what is at stake is not only the future of the Court, but the future of international justice itself.”

The International Criminal Court was established by the Rome Statute on July 17, 1998. The Court investigates and tries individuals “charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.” These crimes are considered human rights crimes that occurred on an international level and the ICC's mandate to bring accountability to perpetrators of these crimes remains challenging to implement. Article 21(3) of the Rome Statute states that the applicable laws of the Court “must be consistent with internationally recognized human rights.” Now, the fate of ICC is very much dependent on the support of the member states party to the Statute.

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Glossary

• Accountability - a responsibility to act in a certain way

• Assault - a violent physical or verbal attack

• Campaign - a connected series of operations 

• Citizens - a member of a state

• Condemn - to declare something or someone evil or wrong 

• Crippling - to cause severe injury 

• Emphasize - to give stress on 

• Globalists - someone who believes that economic and foreign policy should be planned in an international way, rather than according to what is best for one particular country

• Grave - requiring serious thought 

• Jurisdiction - the power, right, or authority to interpret and apply the law

• Illegitimate - not sanctioned by law

• Immediately - without interval of time or delay 

• Impunity - exemption or freedom from punishment, harm, or loss

• Investigate - to observe or study by close examination and systematic inquiry

• Proliferating - growing rapidly 

• Prosecute - to bring legal action against for redress or punishment of a crime or violation of law

• Regretted - to feel dissatisfied about 

• Revoke - to call back 

• Sanctions - an economic or military coercive measure to impose legal bindings

• Sovereignty - freedom from external control particularly of a state

• Threatened - having an uncertain chance of continued survival

• Unprecedented - something that never occurred before