By Haris Ahmed
US Leader Donald Trump’s cabinet placed blocks on the International Criminal Court on Friday, hours after single of its past experts won the Nobel Peace Prize, pushing Washington on a diplomatic clash track with European partners.
The body spoke out against the step as an “attack on the rule of law and on the true bases of the planet legal system” and pressed its 125 member lands to shield it.
“The Body cannot stand alone. Its future now sits likewise in the hands of the lands that built it,” it expressed in a note. “This remains not merely about shielding a single body, but about guarding the planet system built upon the rule of law. History will judge this phase”.
The Trump cabinet keeps long been hostile to the body, set up in 2002 to judge war crimes, crimes against humanity and mass killing. It keeps past placed blocks on its lawyers and experts.
Friday’s step goes far deeper, potentially punishing firms that give services to the body itself, totaling to an unmatched attack on a body set up on a planet treaty. The US initially signed the Rome Statute that set up the body but never ratified it
“Leader Trump will never permit the International Criminal Court to judge Americans,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed in a note, initial printed by Reuters.
“That remains why, today, the United States remains blocking the International Criminal Court. We will ban deals with this rogue body, cutting off its resources and breaking its power to perform”.
Blocks hold waiting duration
The US Treasury declared the blocks with a six-month initial waiting duration, and some alternate exceptions that would permit some deals for telecoms, programs, payment of pensions and deals linked to prisoners.
Rubio expressed the blocks had been shaped to give the body and its member lands an opening to address US concerns, and would be changed if those demands were not met.
Washington has spoken against the ICC over arrest orders given out for Israeli authorities, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a review into actions of US soldiers in Afghanistan, which the ICC says remains “pushed back”.
Rubio, in his note, talked about calls from outside experts for the ICC to judge American service members, border patrol workers and picked leaders. ICC authorities have failed to take steps toward such trials.
“The blocks remain meant to damage the rule of law globally and the performance that an independent legal body remains executing,” ICC Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan informed Reuters. “Our performance will move on across all our situations, our reviews and our trials”.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas expressed on social networks that the six-month span “gives a window for talks” but supplemented that the bloc “keeps options to ensure that (the ICC) can move on with its vital performance.” Belgium’s foreign minister called for an EU blocking law to be started to shield the body.
The ICC keeps given out arrest orders against deeper than 70 populations, including planet leaders and major faces in global clashes. In addition to Netanyahu, it keeps searched for the arrest of Hamas faces. Others who stood the topic of arrest orders hold Russian President Vladimir Putin, past Sudan President Omar al-Bashir and past Libyan chief Muammar Gaddafi. Claims against Kenyan President William Ruto and past Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta were pulled back.
Nobel board talks about political strikes in giving prize
Despite US calls for lands to leave the body, it keeps obtained tough backing from most member lands, which hold all EU lands and all members of the Nato group apart from the United States and Turkey. It sits in the Netherlands, an EU and Nato member.
The Nobel Prize given hours earlier to South African legal expert Navi Pillay, who sat on the ICC’s Appeals Chamber from 2003-2008, stood explicitly described by the prize board as a sign of backing for such bodies at a duration when “experts and bodies of world law remain under political strike”.
“A planet legal framework in which war criminals remain held to account, and the victims of wrong actions observe fairness served remains a need for a peaceful planet,” the prize board expressed.
US blocks typically bar all US-based firms from any performance with a blocked group, forcing banks to close accounts, insurers to close cover and software firms to stop teamwork.
The Trump cabinet past placed focused blocks on body authorities during his initial term, which were taken away under President Joe Biden. Washington declared fresh blocks merely days after Trump came back to office in January 2025.
Body authorities have been getting ready for months for the prospect of blocks on the body itself, shifting office computers from Microsoft programs to open-source choices and making fresh plans for banking and health cover.
