‘Lawless quest’

ICC PHOTO

When United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last week that the US was imposing sanctions against the president and a senior lawyer of the International Criminal Court (ICC), he had choice words for The Hague-based tribunal. It was, Rubio said, “a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.”

That description is rich. Strip away “supranational court” and those words may very well describe not the ICC, but the regime of US President Donald Trump in Washington that is now bent on “dismantling” the tribunal, despite America not even being a member of it.

The latest White House assault against the court involves barring ICC president Tomoko Akane of Japan and trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal from entering the US and carrying out transactions in the US financial system.

Previous to this, in August 2025, other ICC personnel had also been targeted with sanctions, such as ICC Judge Kimberly Prost (Canada), Judge Nicolas Guillou (France), Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan (Fiji), and Deputy Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang (Senegal). All in all, 13 jurists have now been subjected to the US’ unprecedented campaign of intimidation and aggression against the court.

Israeli war criminals

The ICC had earlier protested the US’ actions as “a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution which operates under the mandate from 125 States Parties from all regions.”

“They constitute also an affront against the Court’s States Parties, the rules-based international order and, above all, millions of innocent victims across the world,” the court warned.

The reminder that 125 countries had signed on to the Rome Statute creating the ICC underlines the collective international resolve empowering the tribunal to investigate and prosecute war crimes and other atrocities against humanity. But why is the US so intensely hostile at a body to which it is a proud nonparty, along with the likes of Russia, Israel, China, and India?

American lawyer and human rights activist Kenneth Roth, writing in The Guardian, says that’s because “Donald Trump and his henchman, Marco Rubio, want to make the world safe for US and Israeli war criminals. No one should let them.”

Specifically, Roth pointed out that Trump became apoplectic at the court when it charged “Benjamin Netanyahu and the former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant with deliberately starving and depriving Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Israel is not a member of the ICC, but Palestine, where the alleged crimes took place, is.”

Delicate position

The ICC can hardly be accused of being one-sided against Israel, because along with the indictments against Netanyahu and Gallant in 2024, the court also issued arrest warrants for their arch enemies—top Hamas leaders Mohammed Deif, Ismail Haniyeh, and Yahya Sinwar, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Previous to this, in 2023, the ICC had also put out an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of responsibility for the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

Based on these actions, the ICC is fulfilling its mandate of prosecuting individuals for the world’s most heinous crimes. But because Trump is ideologically allied with Netanyahu and Putin, he has deployed the formidable might of the US to what Roth calls his “lawless quest” of attempting to destroy what more than a hundred countries deem a necessary, last-resort platform for international justice and accountability.

The global community, including the Philippines, should resist this campaign. The Philippines is in a particularly delicate position in this regard, being a longtime security ally of the US. But as an earlier Inquirer editorial pointed out, “Philippine policy toward the ICC must be determined by Philippine law and Philippine interests, rather than the erratic preferences of any foreign government, however friendly or powerful.”

Pursuit of justice

And while the Philippines withdrew its membership during the Duterte administration, it must remain engaged in the pursuit of justice before the ICC by thousands of Filipino victims of the Duterte war on drugs.

Japan, another staunch US ally, has pushed back by declaring that it has consistently supported the ICC and would now provide support to Akane, a Japanese citizen. A group of Japanese parliamentarians has also urged Tokyo to protest, in the strongest terms, the US sanctions.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade also said the country “does not support sanctioning the ICC or its officials,” and reiterated that it respects “the court’s independence and the important role it plays in upholding international law.”

That is the only measure countries big and small should consider in their respective engagements with the ICC. The rest is just more capricious, increasingly authoritarian overreach by the current White House occupant.