By Afshain Afzal

The Western strategic policies to impose the world order experienced a major dent due failure of Israel's self-engineered drama of 7 October 2023 attack on Israel as well as later the judgments of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last month, criminalizing Israel and her allies. To counter the ICC;s and ICJ’s verdicts in favour of Hamas and against Israel, the US House of Representatives, on 4 June 2024, voted to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to condemn the issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The Republican – Democrats alliance in backing the war criminals in their so-called noble cause of genocide is unprecedented. The official statement issued from Washington said, “the charges against the Israeli leaders as baseless, reflecting “the ICC’s well-documented historical bias against Israel.” The on-ground situation is that the new legislation has imposed sanctions on ICC, especially officials associated with issuing arrest warrants for Israelis by blocking financial transfers and preventing the officials from entering the United States. The legislation would impose economic sanctions and visa restrictions to individuals and judges associated with the ICC, including their family members.

In the past too, Washington imposed sanctions on ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda under former President Donald Trump over the court's investigations into alleged war crimes by the Americans in Afghanistan, and Israel in the Palestinian territories as well as Phakiso Mochochoko, head of the ICC's Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division. Interestingly, revoking the sanctions under Executive Order 13928 in April 2021, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the sanctions "were inappropriate and ineffective… We believe, however, that our concerns about these cases would be better addressed through engagement with all stakeholders in the ICC process rather than through the imposition of sanctions." One wonders you never know if tomorrow the US, Russia, China, India or any other countries impose ban on UNO after declaring it as a terrorist organization or organization supporting and funding terrorism. Should we wait for that time?

Under Article 25 of the UN Charter, mandatory UNSC resolutions only create binding obligations for states, and not for international organizations constituted by these states. Therefore, while resolutions passed by the UNSC may be binding upon Member States of the UN regardless of whether they have an impact on another organization, this cannot extend to binding the organization itself. Hence, regardless of the validity of UNSC Resolutions, they would not have any binding effect on the ICC. If we recall, at the meeting of UNSC on 12 June 2003, Resolution 1487 (2003) was adopted by 12 votes in favour with 3 abstentions (France, Germany and Syria). The UN Secretary-General requested immunity from prosecution by the ICC for United Nations peacekeepers from countries not party to the Court’s Statute for 12-month period. No doubt, there cannot be three separate laws for peacekeepers, party states of ICC and nonparty states regarding their involvement in war crimes and genocide. This clash between the UNSC, ICC, party states, non-party states and organizations must be addressed to end the Jungle Law and bring international justice under a single umbrella.