Netanyahu-free zones (ICC members) in blue. Source.
The International Criminal Court has taken an enormously important small step toward respectability and real internationalism by issuing arrest warrants for the very first time for war allies of the United States and Western militaries.
It took many, many inexcusable months for the prosecutor of the ICC to request the arrest warrants, and six more months for the court to issue them. The delays may be in part explained by the constant political pressure on the court from the U.S. government. The eventual action may be partly explained by the extent to which the world was abandoning the pretense that the ICC was a structure of any sort of “rules based order” or equally applied international law.
African governments have been increasingly inclining toward abandoning a northern and western court that prosecutes Africans, in favor of establishing an African Court based in Africa. Whether the new arrest warrants will significantly change that trend remains to be seen.
Netanyahu-free zones in blue. Source.
The record of the ICC thus far remains perverse. The list of indictments begins in 2005. The first 44 indictments, up through 2018, were of Africans. One indictment was made in 2018 and three more in 2022 of South Ossetians aligned with Russia. Two Russians were indicted in 2023, and four more in 2024. And, finally, two Israelis and one Palestinian have been indicted. This brings the total of non-African indictments to 19 percent of total indictments, if you include the Palestinian who was reported dead prior to the indictment. Yet, not a single one of these alleged criminals has been detained, prosecuted, or convicted. The U.S.-aligned indictees (the two from Israel) make up less than 3 percent of the total.
Among the Africans indicted, four are on trial, and one is in the appeals stage. Proceedings against 32 have been completed, with the results that two are serving sentences, seven have finished sentences, four have been acquitted, seven have had the charges against them dismissed, four have had the charges against them withdrawn, and eight have died before the conclusion of the proceedings against them.
Of the 67 indictments, those including the charge of making war (what the ICC calls “aggression”) are zero. Those including the charge of genocide equal one (an African). The rest, including the Israelis and the Palestinian, are all charged with one of more of the following: “war crimes,” “crimes against humanity,” and/or contempt of the court.
Netanyahu-free zones in blue. Source.
Sadly, the court has been pretty worthy of contempt, and has effectively backed one side of a war on Libya, one side of the war in Ukraine, one side of a war in Georgia, and one side of various wars in Africa, as well as investigating one side of a dispute in Venezuela. In the current war on Gaza, the ICC has not only managed to indict favorites of the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin, but also to indict those guilty of horrors on both sides of a conflict.
For the ICC to put the contempt of well-meaning people around the world truly behind it, it should take the following steps:
- Indict and prosecute those creating wars by charging them with “aggression.”
- Indict and prosecute without fear or favor for any empire.
- Indict and prosecute on multiple sides of conflicts as merited; learn from the latest indictments, no matter what motivated them.
- Encourage and celebrate those nations committing to doing their part in making the necessary arrests following the indictments.