Human Rights First Condemns Deepened U.S. Attack on International Criminal Court
Washington D.C. — Human Rights First condemned the Trump administration’s action today imposing financial sanctions on four International Criminal Court (ICC) judges who have issued rulings over the last five years adverse to the U.S. government’s positions on the court’s Palestine and Afghanistan investigations.
“The U.S. and Israeli governments wish very much that their conduct could never be scrutinized by the ICC, no matter what lines it crosses or where it takes place,” said Adam Keith, Human Rights First’s Senior Director for Accountability. “Because that isn’t the case, the Trump administration is resorting to brute force, sanctioning a judge from a NATO treaty ally and three others in an attempt to bully the court out of its Palestine investigation.
“These sanctions will make it harder for survivors of war crimes and other atrocities to seek justice, not just through the Palestine investigation, but in the Philippines, Darfur, and other situations where the ICC offers the only real prospect for accountability. Those atrocities are not subject to President Trump’s or any other head of state’s pardon powers – but whether the world’s ‘court of last resort’ is practically able to keep the lights on and has the political will to keep investigating such crimes itself will depend on whether its member states speak out against this gross misuse of sanctions and defend the court.”
Today is not the first time the United States has used targeted sanctions against foreign judges, but the precedents have involved acts of bribery and corruption or judges in dictatorships like Russia who are complicit in arbitrary detention and other serious human rights abuses – and not a court to which the vast majority of the United States’s closest allies belong.
Today’s sanctions were imposed under President Trump’s Executive Order 14203, targeting judges at the ICC’s pre-trial and appellate levels: Beti Hohler (Slovenia), Reine Alapini-Gansou (Benin), Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza (Peru), and Solomy Balungi Bossa (Uganda).
For more on Human Rights First’s advocacy related to the International Criminal Court, see our website here.
To speak with Keith please contact [email protected]
