NEW YORK, 9 October 2026 — UN Secretary-General António Guterres has condemned new United States sanctions imposed on the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an institution, calling them “a serious blow to our collective pursuit of international criminal justice, of which the ICC is a key pillar”.
The measures, announced on Friday by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, go further than earlier US sanctions that already targeted 13 of the court’s judges and prosecutors. Rubio said Washington would ban transactions with the court and warned: “Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC.” He vowed to dismantle the court “brick by brick” unless it changes course.
Under the designation, the court’s assets under US jurisdiction are blocked and US companies and individuals are generally barred from doing business with it. CBS News reported that the Treasury Department is allowing some services to continue for 180 days while the court’s member states try to address Washington’s objections.
In a statement delivered by his spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, Guterres said he was “deeply alarmed” by the expected impact on the court’s “continued ability to perform its important mandates”. He reiterated his “unwavering support for the independence of the court and its officials” and called on all States to uphold their commitments under international law. The UN remains committed to cooperating with the ICC under the relationship agreement approved by the General Assembly on 13 September 2004.
The ICC described the move as “an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order”, aimed at intimidating those who work for or cooperate with it. “The court will continue to fully discharge its mandate, with independence and impartiality,” said ICC President Tomoko Akane, adding that the court’s fate “now rests also in the hands of the States that created it”.
Independent UN human rights experts separately called the sanctions a “brash attempt” to dismantle a collective legal system for holding perpetrators of the gravest crimes to account. “Sanctioning the institution entrusted with delivering justice for the gravest international crimes is an assault on the foundations of international accountability and rule of law,” they said, warning that the step directly injures victims of atrocities who rely on the court for justice and reparation.
Neither the United States nor Israel is a party to the Rome Statute. The foreign ministers of Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom said they “regret and strongly disagree” with the sanctions, warning they would significantly affect the court’s work and staff.
References
- UN News: ‘Serious blow’: Guterres condemns new US sanctions on International Criminal Court, 9 October 2026
- United Nations: Guterres condemns new US sanctions on the ICC, 9 October 2026
- CBS News: U.S. sanctions International Criminal Court, vowing to dismantle it “brick by brick”, 9 October 2026
Featured image: The International Criminal Court headquarters in The Hague (file photo, 2022). Photo by Choinowski / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.