The U.S. has imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday (9 October) escalating tensions with European allies and potentially targeting companies that provide services to the tribunal. The move came hours after former ICC judge Navi Pillay won the Nobel Peace Prize.
ICC Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan condemned the measures, saying they were intended to undermine international law and the work of an independent judicial institution.
“Our work will continue across all our situations, our investigations and our prosecutions,” Khan told Reuters.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington would prohibit transactions with the court, arguing that President Trump would not allow the ICC to prosecute U.S. citizens.
“Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC,” Rubio said, calling on U.S. allies that are members of the court to pressure it to change course.
The U.S. Treasury issued four general licences shortly after the announcement, allowing certain transactions involving the ICC’s telecommunications, software, pension payments and detainees.
Washington has long opposed the ICC, which was established in 2002 to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Trump administration has criticised the court over arrest warrants issued for Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a previous investigation into the conduct of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. The ICC has since closed the Afghanistan investigation.
The latest measures go beyond earlier U.S. sanctions targeting individual ICC officials, potentially affecting businesses that provide services to the institution. Such restrictions can create difficulties with banking, insurance and software services.
ICC officials had been preparing for the possibility of broader sanctions, including switching office computers from Microsoft products to open-source alternatives and making new arrangements for banking and health insurance.
The court is based in The Hague, the Netherlands, and has 125 member states, including all European Union countries. The United States is not a member.
The sanctions were announced hours after South African jurist Navi Pillay received the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in international criminal justice. She served on the ICC’s Appeals Chamber from 2003 to 2008.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the award was intended to highlight the importance of international law at a time when judges and institutions were facing political pressure.
The ICC’s registrar, Osvaldo Zavala Giler, had called on the European Union to prepare a so-called blocking mechanism to shield European entities from the extraterritorial effects of U.S. sanctions.
Rubio said Washington had delayed the measures to give the court and its member states an opportunity to address U.S. concerns. He warned that further action could follow if negotiations failed to produce a solution.
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