The government of President of the United States, Donald Trump, imposed new sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) this Friday (9), the day on which a former judge of the Hague court received the Nobel Peace Prize.
According to information from Reuters, this Friday’s measure aims to punish companies that provide services to the court.
“President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement seen by Reuters before the official announcement of the sanctions.
“That’s why, today, the United States is sanctioning the International Criminal Court. We will prohibit dealings with this harmful court, cutting off its resources and paralyzing its ability to operate,” Rubio added.
ICC Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan told Reuters the sanctions “must be condemned”.
“The sanctions aim to undermine the rule of law at the international level and the work that an independent judiciary is doing,” Khan said. “Our work will continue in all of our situations, investigations and prosecutions.”
This Friday, South African jurist Navi Pillay, who served as a judge at the ICC Appeals Chamber between 2003 and 2008, won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has put into practice a plan to “dismantle” the ICC, with sanctions against court judges and prosecutors and pressure for other countries to abandon the court.
One of the main points of American dissatisfaction with the ICC is the arrest warrant issued by the court in 2024 against the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, on allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the conflict in the Gaza Strip.
In his speech at the UN General Assembly in September, Trump harshly criticized the ICC.
“The United States opposes […] to the uncontrolled institution known as the International Criminal Court. We will never allow U.S. military personnel or anyone else to be investigated or subjected to show trials by an anti-American court that has no jurisdiction over us. They are an evil group of people,” said the American president at the time.
In announcing the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Pillay, the Norwegian prize committee stated that “the system of international law is under enormous pressure, and its institutions are under attack”.
“We see a shift toward power politics at the expense of legal structures and global respect for law and justice. Whenever force overrides law, it undermines stability, trust and peaceful coexistence,” the committee said in a statement.