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The Trump administration continues its relentless demolition of the old multilateral order , and the International Criminal Court ( ICC ) is the new target of its sanctions, due to the investigation of possible war crimes committed by American and Israeli forces in Afghanistan and Palestine .
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Last week, the White House imposed economic sanctions against ICC officials “directly engaged with any effort to investigate or prosecute United States personnel without the consent of the U.S. ,” arguing that the probe threatens to subvert U.S. sovereignty and subject American officials and their allies “to harassment , abuse , and possible arrest .”
The executive order announced by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo , released two months after the Court approved an investigation into potential war crimes by American troops and CIA agents in Afghanistan , also expanded visa restrictions against ICC officials and their families.
However, ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda declared on Monday that she would not be swayed from her mission of prosecuting war criminals , including the Taliban and government forces in Afghanistan .
“These attacks constitute an escalation and an unacceptable attempt to interfere with the rule of law and the courts”, Bensouda told VOA . “An attack on the ICC also represents an attack against the interests of victims of atrocity crimes , for many of whom the ICC represents the last hope for justice ,” stressed the Gambian lawyer, who is the target of a smear campaign in the Israeli press due to her alleged links to “ terrorist ” groups .
Bensouda had her visa to travel to the U.S. revoked in 2019, yet she has been able to visit New York several times since then to brief the United Nations Security Council ( UNSC ) on her office’s work.
“The visa restrictions and the threats that were announced by the U.S. , I see as naked attempts to interfere with the Court’s judicial and prosecutorial independence to meet political objectives,” she noted, adding that the ICC is accustomed to the pressure after African leaders criticized it for disproportionately targeting Africans .
On June 8, Bensouda told ICC’s Pretrial Chamber that a war crimes probe on Israel could proceed despite the continued application of the 1993-1995 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority ( PA ), as Israel , Washington , and some European allies have maintained.
According to Pompeo, the Court had no authority to advance such an investigation because Israel —as the U.S. , Russia , China , and India —never joined the Rome Statute which gave way to the creation of the ICC in 2002.
He also said that the Palestinians “are not qualified to obtain full membership or participate as a state in international organizations, entities or conferences, including the ICC .”
Nevertheless, while Israel signed the Rome Statute , which constitutes the legal framework of the Court, yet never ratified it, in 2015 the ICC was one of the first international bodies to accept Palestine as a member state .
On May 19, PA President Mahmoud Abbas affirmed its administration no longer viewed itself as bound by the Oslo Accords due to the Israeli plans to annex 30% of the occupied West Bank .
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Headhunt
For the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , the Hague-based court “is politicized and obsessed with carrying out a headhunt against Israel and the U.S. ,” although the global reaction to the sanctions was different. “The United Kingdom strongly supports the ICC in tackling impunity for the worst international crimes,” highlighted Britain’s Foreign Minister Dominic Raab .
Court officials “should be able to carry out their work independently and impartially, and without fear of sanction ,” expressed Raab in a statement similar to the position of the UN , the European Union , and human rights organizations.
It is for sure that the ICC is accustomed to political pressure as Bensouda underscored due to the nature of its mission, yet also due to the powers’ lack of interest to cooperate with its work and hence, its inability to investigate violations from Iraq to Colombia .
Conceived as a court of last resort to prosecute offenses that otherwise would go unpunished, the ICC’s contradictions and bias were so obvious that in 2017, during the Addis Ababa African Union ( AU ) summit, 16 countries indicated their intention to abandon the international body. This move was reversed, however, after South Africa and Gambia withdrew their notifications to the UN, leaving Burundi as the only country that left the Court.
Sudan’s former President Omar al-Bashir
, who is wanted by the ICC on charges of alleged genocide in Darfur —an accusation that only the U.S. supports—was at the Addis Ababa summit . Two years before, a South African tribunal criticized President Jacob Zuma’s government for failing to arrest Bashir when he attended an AU meeting in Johannesburg .
Bashir
was overthrown by a coup last year amid protests against his rule. On Monday, a Sudanese prosecutor suggested that nationals wanted by the ICC may not be extradited to The Hague , alluding to “l egal obstacles ” concerning Sudan’s sovereignty .
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In the same vein, Tanzania , Benin , and Ivory Coast revoked in the last six months the right of individuals and NGOs to sue them before the African Court on Human and People’s Rights , leaving just six member countries where the Court has such jurisdiction.
Inspired by the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War , and the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda , the ICC has jurisdiction over four main crimes: genocide , crimes against humanity , war crimes , and the crime of aggression ; 123 nations, including Mexico , are State Parties to the Rome Statute and recognize ICC’s authority.
Unlike the International Court of Justice ( ICJ ), the ICC is not part of the UN system , with its bilateral relationship being governed by a separate agreement. The ICJ , which is among the UN’s six principal organs , mainly hears disputes between nations.
Thus far, 45 individuals, all Africans, have been indicted in the ICC including former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi , and the former presidents of Kenya and Ivory Coast , Uhuru Kenyatta and Laurent Gbagbo , respectively.
While the ICC’s contradictions aforementioned were exploited to instigate “regime change” operations in countries such as Libya —the U.S. voted in the UNSC for Gaddafi’s referral to the Court in 2011,—they also served to expose other serious incongruities of the multilateral system .
For example, in 2015 Faisal bin Hassan Trad , Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the UN in Geneva , was elected Chair of the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee , the panel that appoints independent experts, despite Riyadh ’s dismal record of abuse and discrimination against women and minorities .
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Even worse, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ( UAE ) have got their way in Yemen , where more than 100,000 people died in the last five years as a result of their invasion , air strikes on civilians , famine , and cholera .
It is the same Saudi Arabia which was taken off from a global blacklist of parties whose actions have harmed children in conflict by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres this week, not to mention its funding of the Islamic State and the outrageous 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey .
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On Wednesday, the Human Rights Council held an urgent debate on allegations of “ systemic racism , police brutality , and violence against peaceful protesters ” in the U.S. and elsewhere in the context of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis .
During the session in Geneva , requested by Burkina Faso on behalf of the 54 African nations, Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd , asked the group to set up a commission of inquiry into racism and police brutality in the U.S. “I am asking you to help us: black people in America,” remarked Floyd in a remote address.
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Under UN guidelines , commissions of inquiry are aimed at gathering information and recommending measures to redress violations and provide justice to victims , as well as hold perpetrators to account .
For her part, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights , Michelle Bachelet , called for “swift reforms and decisions” on systemic discrimination and supporting “people of African descent across the world.” Washington , nonetheless, withdrew from the Council in 2018, calling the UN body “a hypocritical and self-serving organization.”
The powerful and aggressive nationalist forces unleashed four years ago by U.S. President Donald Trump are busy working on the demolition of the multilateral order . Just last month, Trump decided to withdraw from the Treaty on Open Skies , a key agreement for the control of nuclear and conventional weapons .
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This week, Reuters revealed that the White House also decided to abandon the 33-year-old Missile Technology Control Regime Treaty ( MTCR ) in order to sell high-tech drones to Saudi Arabia , the UAE , and other countries.
The move, warned experts, will increase the genocide in Yemen and mark the end of the MTCR , an agreement with 34 signatories designed to stop the proliferation of nuclear missiles and other weapons of mass destruction .
Editing by Sofía Danis
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