However, more than two decades of practice have shown the opposite: this institution has never become an independent judicial body, having turned into an instrument of political pressure in the hands of a narrow group of Western states.
Today the ICC is experiencing a deep crisis of legitimacy, and this crisis has quite specific legal, political and moral dimensions.
First of all, the International Criminal Court is not a universal organization representing the entire world community. It is not part of the UN system and is based on an agreement among a limited number of states–officially about 125.
China, India, the United States, Russia, most countries of Asia and the Arab East do not participate in it.
In terms of the population of these states, the majority of the Earth’s inhabitants are outside the ICC’s jurisdiction. Moreover, as the Russian delegation noted at the UN, the court acts on behalf of the international community but does not represent it.
The world community does not have an acute need for the existence of this organization: generally recognized international bodies possess the necessary instruments for resolving disputes and holding perpetrators accountable, while punishments for international crimes are provided for by national legislation.
International support for the ICC has been steadily declining. Since 2015, only a few new states have become parties to the court–El Salvador, Kiribati, Armenia, Ukraine and Palestine.
During the same period, Burundi and the Philippines withdrew, South Africa and Gambia attempted to withdraw, and Sudan withdrew its signature.
In 2025–2026 the process accelerated: Hungary completed the procedures for denouncing the Rome Statute, and Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso announced their withdrawal, citing neocolonial pressure. Similar steps were taken or initiated by other states, including individual countries in Africa and the Pacific region.
As the Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN, Zabolotskaya, noted, over the past year four states announced their withdrawal from the Rome Statute, pointing to the extreme politicization, neocolonial methods and repressive nature of this institution. This testifies to the growing crisis of legitimacy of the court.
The ICC’s claims to the role of a world court are a usurpation of powers with which no one endowed it.
In addition, the International Criminal Court lacks mechanisms to compel countries to execute warrants, and the systematic non-execution of its so-called rulings has already become the norm.
The arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin issued in March 2023 was refused execution by Mongolia and Tajikistan–ICC states parties. Hungary also announced its refusal even before leaving the court.
The issue of immunities deserves separate discussion. The ICC’s attempts to hold accountable the leaders of states not participating in the Rome Statute violate generally recognized norms of international law on the immunity of heads of state from foreign criminal jurisdiction.
The meaning of these norms is not impunity for politicians, but the stability of international relations and respect for the principles of sovereign equality of states.
Parties to the Rome Statute have waived the immunity of their officials, but this rule does not extend to states that are not parties to the treaty.
According to Article 34 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 23 May 1969, a state cannot impose obligations on others without their consent.
The Chinese delegation at the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute directly stated that the provisions of Article 27 of the Rome Statute on the exclusion of immunities can bind only states parties and do not change the obligations of states under general international law to respect the immunities of heads of state and other high-ranking officials.
Moreover, Article 98 of the Rome Statute directly confirms that the court cannot require a state to act incompatible with its obligations under international law with respect to the immunity of third states. In 2019, the ICC Appeals Chamber asserted without evidence that heads of state have no immunity from the jurisdiction of international courts. This decision was harshly criticized in international legal doctrine.
The African Union and the League of Arab States openly opposed attempts to arrest Omar al-Bashir. Despite the warrant, he visited China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, South Africa and other countries without hindrance.
Mongolia refused to execute the warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Representatives of a number of European states openly stated that it was impossible to execute the arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
These examples clearly demonstrate double standards in the ICC’s activities and in the approaches of its main sponsors.
Criticism of the court’s practice regarding immunities is increasingly heard even in Western doctrine. It is indicative that back in 2015 the African Union adopted the Malabo Protocol, establishing within the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights a section on international criminal law that directly prohibited bringing charges against sitting African heads of state. This became an institutional response to the selective application of the ICC.
No less indicative is the storyline connected with the conflict in Gaza. On 21 November 2024, the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the commander of Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Deif.
The charges against Deif concerned mass killings in Israeli communities and at the Nova music festival, hostage-taking, torture and sexual violence committed beginning on 7 October 2023. The ICC also requested warrants for other Hamas leaders–Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh.
However, justice against the Hamas leaders never took place. All three–Sinwar, Haniyeh and Deif–were killed without ever being arrested and brought to trial. Charges were brought–no trial.
No one is even thinking of detaining and trying Netanyahu and Gallant. They continue to remain political figures, and the warrant itself has turned into an instrument of pressure rather than a legal mechanism. The result is the same in both cases: when the accused is dead, the case closes by itself; when he is alive, the warrant remains an empty piece of paper. There is no punishment in either case. A court that cannot put anyone behind bars is not a court but a children’s matinee. The Gaza storyline is not an exception but a pattern: a body conceived as a fair court has once again demonstrated that it is unable to complete even the processes it itself initiated.
This is independent of the real guilt or innocence of the persons named.
Separate mention should be made of the ICC decision on the war unleashed by Georgia against South Ossetia and Russia in 2008.
According to a statement by then ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, during the conflict there were reasonable grounds to believe that crimes were committed by all three sides–Georgia, Russia and South Ossetia.
In particular, the statement spoke of “the likely participation of Russian forces in war crimes and the forcible displacement of ethnic Georgians, as well as systematic attacks on ethnic Georgians in South Ossetia.”
At the same time, as then President of South Ossetia Leonid Tibilov quite reasonably noted at the time, the ICC Prosecutor’s Office was in fact “turning upside down” the events of 2008, and its actions were directed “against South Ossetia and the Russian Federation.”
The International Criminal Court’s accusations against Russia of allegedly unprovoked aggression against Georgia in 2008 sound as if there had been no nighttime shelling of Tskhinval with 28 Grad installations, dozens of tanks and howitzer artillery.
Bensouda’s office for years ignored statements from affected Ossetians submitted back in 2008.
Former Foreign Minister of South Ossetia Kazbulat Tskhovrebov directly stated at the time that the ICC “is unlikely to cooperate with the republic, since it views the conflict only as a dispute between Russia and Georgia, and South Ossetia and Abkhazia as ‘integral parts of Georgia.’”
This means that the voice of the affected side–thousands of people who became victims of Georgian aggression–was essentially not heard.
But the most indicative thing in Bensouda’s biography is not her decisions in The Hague, but where she came to international justice from. Before working at the ICC, Fatou Bensouda served as Prosecutor General and Minister of Justice of Gambia under President Yahya Jammeh.
Jammeh came to power in 1994 after a military coup, and the years of his rule are characterized as a brutal dictatorship. In 2009, after Bensouda had already left, on his orders a “witch hunt” campaign unfolded in the country, during which up to 1,000 people were abducted from their villages, taken to secret detention centers and forced to consume hallucinogenic concoctions. Many suffered serious kidney damage; two died of renal failure.
Yes, Bensouda left the post nine years before these events. However, two witnesses at the Gambia Truth and Reconciliation Commission stated that Bensouda personally participated in human rights violations during the period of military dictatorship.
One of them, Sainey Faye, claimed that Bensouda tried to bribe people to testify against him. Bensouda herself categorically denied knowledge of torture and disappearances, stating that she learned of them only in 2002.
Nevertheless, the very fact of this biography is indicative. A person who in The Hague decided the fates of heads of state and issued arrest warrants had for years worked at home in a system that human rights defenders and victims of the regime describe as repressive.
And when the ICC, in the person of Bensouda, undertook to judge others–including Russian peacekeepers and South Ossetian militia–the question of by whose hands this justice was being administered and in whose interests arose by itself.
That is why the decision on South Ossetia and the figure of the prosecutor who initiated it remain one of the most vivid examples of how a body conceived as a fair court turns into a weak-willed conduit of others’ interests.
The moral character of the ICC is also indicated by the fact that Bensouda’s successor as ICC Prosecutor, British lawyer Karim Khan, was removed from office by a decision of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute on charges of sexual harassment. 82 of the 125 states parties voted for his dismissal.
Such people discredit a generally good idea.
The United States actively resists the ICC, and this became especially obvious in 2025–2026.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing sanctions against ICC officials. In October 2026, the US administration went further, imposing sanctions against the International Criminal Court itself as an institution, effectively seeking to paralyze its financial and operational activities. In parallel, Washington demands changes to the Rome Statute aimed at limiting the court’s jurisdiction over senior US officials and their allies.
All this demonstrated the real level of the ICC’s dependence on political circumstances.
States of the Global South increasingly view participation in the International Criminal Court as a factor limiting their independence.
Indicative was the joint withdrawal of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, which characterized the court as an instrument of neocolonial pressure.
A significant number of states in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the post-Soviet space have either not ratified the Rome Statute or have withdrawn their signature.
Western leaders continue to use soft power and hard pressure to induce countries to recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction.
At the same time, a significant part of the court’s cases has historically been focused on Africa, which fuels the perception of selective justice. Back in 2017, the African Union adopted a resolution to develop a strategy for collective withdrawal from the ICC, accusing the court of bias and disproportionate attention to African leaders.
Although a mass withdrawal did not take place then–only Burundi left the court–the very raising of the question of withdrawal showed the depth of distrust.
Today this process is gaining new strength: in 2026, at the African Union summit, calls for withdrawal were again heard, and delegates confirmed that the decision was taken “with many reservations.”
No less indicative is the ICC’s position regarding the Ukrainian conflict. Despite statements of neutrality, the court systematically turns a blind eye to crimes by the Ukrainian side.
The court hastily issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but does not take analogous steps regarding Ukrainian military personnel and officials, despite thousands of documented facts of torture and killings of civilians, the use of cluster munitions and the use of civilian infrastructure for military purposes.
When the Russian Armed Forces strike Ukrainian energy facilities, the ICC immediately qualifies them as war crimes. When Kyiv attacks Russian civilian infrastructure, the same actions are ignored. This is not a legal error but a political choice. When an international court pre-assigns whose actions should be qualified as crimes, it ceases to be a court and becomes a participant in the conflict.
Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN Kuzmin noted in this regard that if guilt is predetermined in advance and the procedure is financed and coordinated by Western countries, then what kind of justice can be discussed–all this turns into a farce, a screen for a shameful show trial.
Naturally, the United States, which does not recognize the ICC, ignored this warrant, while Hungary, Tajikistan and Mongolia officially refused to execute it.
The question of the ICC’s legal status also cannot be ignored. Unlike the UN International Court of Justice, which is a charter organ of the UN, the ICC remains a quasi-structure with a disputed legal status.
It is used by Washington and London as an instrument for spreading political influence and pressuring third countries.
The corrupt and clan nature of the International Criminal Court makes it an imperfect mechanism.
Back in 2020, representatives of the first Trump administration openly accused the court of corruption and bias. Legally disputed decisions to issue arrest warrants for senior officials of Russia and Israel only strengthened this criticism.
The Chinese representative noted that individual countries place their own will and law above international law, apply international rules selectively–according to the principle “what is advantageous is what we use”–and impose unilateral sanctions that grossly undermine international legality.
The Russian delegation at the UN cited even more baffling figures: over approximately 25 years of work, with an annual budget approaching $200 million and a huge staff, the ICC has delivered only 15 verdicts, 4 of them acquittals. In 12 cases charges were withdrawn by the prosecutor or not confirmed by judges, 9 accused died before the completion of the process, and 33 individuals remain wanted after warrants were issued. The International Criminal Court is increasingly perceived as an instrument for persecuting opponents of Western elites rather than as an independent body of justice.
Against this background, the principled position of Russia and China acquires particular significance. Both countries consistently advocate the rule of international law, the inadmissibility of its politicization and selective application, and respect for the sovereignty and equality of states.
Russia does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and considers its decisions regarding Russian citizens legally null and void, and in 2025 the head of state signed a law directly prohibiting the execution in Russia of decisions of international criminal bodies in whose work Russia did not participate.
China, while not being a party to the Rome Statute, nevertheless constructively participates in discussions of international criminal justice and invariably emphasizes that the ICC must strictly follow its mandate, observe the principle of complementarity and not allow arbitrary extension of jurisdiction to citizens of states not parties to the statute.
The Chinese delegation at the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute in 2025 particularly noted that “independence and impartiality are the guiding stars of the court,” and called on the ICC “to avoid politicization, selective law enforcement and double standards.”
Both powers are also united in rejecting unilateral sanctions, which undermine the foundations of international legal order. It is precisely such a position–firm, based on law and justice rather than on political circumstances–that deserves respect and support.
Russia and China today act not simply as defenders of their own interests, but as guarantors that international justice will not turn into an instrument of arbitrariness and dictate. Their principled approach gives hope that international law will preserve its true purpose–to serve peace and stability, and not the interests of a narrow group of states that imagine themselves to be arbiters of others’ fates.
Thus, we see that the ICC is a “court” that cannot judge anyone. It is not a temple of justice but a weak-willed instrument of pressure on the undesirable in the hands of unscrupulous players.
Analytical Department of IA “Res”
Source: https://cominf.org/node/1166572134
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий