Trump announces sanctions ICC hours after Indian-origin ex-judge Navi Pillay wins Nobel Peace Prize

On Friday, the United States announced sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC), aiming to weaken its operations shortly after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Navi Pillay, a former ICC judge. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed to ban transactions with the "rogue court," escalating the Trump administration's campaign against the Hague-based tribunal.

Rubio stated, "Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC." However, the impact of the sanctions was softened by a six-month grace period, allowing the court's member states to demonstrate progress in addressing US concerns. Despite the US rejecting the sanctions as an attack on international law, countries such as Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom strongly disagreed with the move, calling it "deeply regrettable."

The European Union urged for dialogue, while rights group Amnesty International urged countries to resist the sanctions, fearing they would isolate and destroy the court. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the US decision, criticizing the ICC as a political body posing a threat to law-abiding democracies. The move came the same day the Nobel Committee awarded the peace prize to Pillay, an 85-year-old jurist who previously headed the Rwanda genocide tribunal and led a UN commission accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

Rubio, however, did not mention Pillay or the Nobel award, emphasizing that the sanctions were necessary to protect security personnel and elected officials from prosecution by a court the US has never joined. President Trump vowed that the International Criminal Court would never prosecute Americans, asserting that the measures would cripple the court's ability to operate.