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| ‘What can countries do? History points to some answers.’ Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images |
Fri 25 Sep 2026
Varsha Gandikota
The international legal order is in shambles. But from the ruins of impunity and lawbreaking, a group of nations is working to enforce accountability.
On Monday, the UN general assembly’s high-level meetings opened to news that Washington had drawn up sanctions against the international criminal court, targeting its bank accounts, software, insurers and staff.
On Tuesday, the US president stood at the podium and threatened Iran with annihilation. On Thursday at the same rostrum, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted by the ICC for war crimes, cast all those seeking accountability as “barbarians who threaten our common civilization”. Palestinian officials were absent, denied travel visas by the United States.
Netanyahu has never pretended to respect international law. When South Africa brought its Genocide Convention case against Israel’s actions in Gaza, Netanyahu declared: “Nobody will stop us – not The Hague.” This summer, he mused on American television that, should his plane ever be forced down in a country that honours the warrant, Israel’s special forces could be given “a new task”. The American president has promised he will not be arrested on US soil “in any way, shape, or form”.
The message to the world is plain: crimes committed by the allies and acolytes of power will never be punished.
This impunity is not limited to Gaza. It’s playing out in the
accelerating ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. It has travelled to
Lebanon, where Israeli strikes have killed more than 4,000 people this
year and displaced more than a million. In southern Syria, Israeli
troops shell and raid villages in the countryside around Damascus. In
Sudan, massacres are carried out with arms, technology and financing of
the United Arab Emirates, an ally of the Israeli government.
Every commander with a patron has learnt the lesson of the past three years. Mass atrocity carries no price if your friends are strong enough.
States that resist encounter punishments in dizzying varieties – sanctions, tarriffs, threats and isolation. South Africa lost US aid after bringing its genocide case to The Hague. Colombia’s president had his visa revoked after speaking out on Gaza in the streets of New York.
This too will not remain confined to the global south. Instruments built for terrorists and drug cartels are now pointed at judges. More than a dozen ICC judges and prosecutors, including the court’s president, already live under US sanctions. A designation of the whole institution would reach every European bank, insurer and technology supplier serving a court that sits in the Netherlands.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/25/israel-us-un-icc-hague-netanyahu?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other