The following is a guest-post by Henry Off. Henry is Board Member at the Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights and a lawyer currently working as an independent consultant at the International Criminal Court. The views in the blogpost and the article are his own. The full article, Crimes of Law: Bringing Legal Professionals to Trial for International Crimes, is available here.
(Image: Adobe)
International crimes are often committed by following the law, not by deviating from it. When the South African apartheid regime subjugated nearly every aspect of Black and coloured South African life, this totalizing system of discrimination, fragmentation, and repression “required administration, application and interpretation by judges, magistrates, prosecutors, officials of the Departments of Justice and Law and Order, and lawyers, both in the academy and the legal profession.” When Nazi Germany repressed the rights of Jews and other minorities, eventually leading to genocide and other unspeakable atrocities, it did so behind a matrix of legal decrees and judicial orders conjoined to the normative German legal system. In Iran, the judiciary, prosecutors, and defence lawyers similarly operate within and facilitate a legal system built on torture, executions, and unfair trials.
Examples of these overarching systems of atrocity crimes remain all too common. Legal professionals write legal opinions that justify torture or unlawful detention. They reinterpret constitutions in judicial decisions to entrench persecutory policies, shield perpetrators from accountability, or cloak ostensibly colonial criminal conduct in the language of legality.
Are you someone who believes, to your core, that all victims and survivors of atrocities – regardless of who they are or where they live – deserve justice and accountability?
Do you have experience in prosecuting complex cases and powerful figures? Can you withstand immense amounts of pressure and efforts by hostile regimes to thwart your work and threaten your family?
Is your conviction that all people deserve to live with dignity so strong that you are willing to be sanctioned by the United States of America on your first day of work?
If that sounds like you, this job could just be perfect: Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
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The search for a new ICC chief Prosecutor is on.
Against the backdrop of geopolitical turmoil and threats against the ICC, the risks inherent for whoever takes up the chief Prosecutor position are obvious. As Melanie O’Brien asks: “Who is now going to want to nominate for a position that has such challenges, because they know they will automatically be sanctioned by the U.S.?”
But what makes filling the position so difficult is what simultaneously makes identifying the right person so exceptionally important. It may sound trite, but never has the choice of the next Prosecutor been more important. Never before could it so reasonably be argued that if the wrong person is chosen, they could be the last chief Prosecutor of the ICC.
I do not mean to say this to be dramatic; the challenges facing the ICC are existential and the person filling the role of chief Prosecutor will have to guide their office through unprecedented political headwaters without sacrificing the independence or impartiality of the Court. As Tom Dannenbaum says: states must find someone “who is willing to pursue investigations and cases against the most powerful actors in the system, despite the extraordinary forces being deployed in the opposite direction.”
A version of the following article was originally published in the Globe and Mail, and relates to the implications of Canada‘s decision to allow ICC suspect Benjamin Netanyahu to travel through its airspace. However, Canada was not alone. As covered in some depth here, other states and ICC members – including Greece, Italy, and France – have permitted Netanyahu to fly over their territories. The argument below, therefore, is applicable to all of these states and indeed all ICC member states concerned about their own territorial integrity as well as that of their allies.
Netayahu’s flight path in December 2025, just months after avoiding European airspace (Image: itamilradar)
With its sovereignty coming under consistent threat from the United States, Ottawa should take every opportunity it gets to articulate – to Canadians and others – that we are a proud and sovereign state. That includes the way we engage with international organizations, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC). On that scale, however, the Canadian government is signalling that Canada’s sovereignty is up for negotiation. If we don’t want our sovereignty to be trampled on, we have to stand up for it.
In November 2024, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, charging him (as well as Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and three since-deceased Hamas leaders) with war crimes and crimes against humanity over the war in Gaza. The warrant was based on a painstakingly careful investigation, a review of the evidence against Netanyahu (including by world-renowned judge and Holocaust survivor Theodor Meron), and the approval of ICC judges. As a member-state of the Court, would Canada enforce the warrant? Then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saidCanada would “abide” by the Court’s decision. A year later, Prime Minister Mark Carney doubled down, telling Bloomberg journalist Mishal Husain twice that Netanyahu would be arrested if he came to Canada.
U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty)
The International Criminal Court is once again under attack from the United States. The reason behind the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the institution is simple: an insistence that they enjoy wholesale impunity. In numerous contexts, including the Caribbean, Venezuela, Palestine, Afghanistan, and El Salvador, there are credible allegations of international crimes committed by U.S. citizens. If the U.S. wasn’t exposed to accountability for its atrocities, it wouldn’t be seeking to destroy the Court.
Now, will the ICC’s backers please stand up?
American aggression towards the ICC is nothing new. The U.S. has been seeking to subvert the work of the ICC since before the Court was even a fixture of the global arena. Since the bygone era of President George W. Bush, Republicans in particular have been obsessed with the Court and its operations. From John Bolton to Mike Pompeo to now Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Republican officials have been fixated with the ICC even though it has never actually issued a warrant for any American citizen.
Ironically, the efforts of U.S. officials to condemn the ICC have bestowed prestige and legitimacy upon the institution. To those across the globe who believe that the ICC is feckless in the name of American imperial ambitions, tantrums from successive Republican administrations is a powerful antidote. In a nutshell, the greater Washington’s hysteria over the ICC, the more powerful and persuasive the Court appears to those who believe the U.S. is not above the law.
Hoping To Survive, by painter Razieh Gholami, from Afghanistan (2019)
Dear readers,
I wanted to share a new academic article that I wrote with you, on a topic I know is close to the hearts and minds of many: the atrocities and human rights violations faced by refugees and migrants around the world. The article is entitled Crimes Against Migrants as Crimes Against All of Us: The Relevance of International Criminal Law to Migrant Control and has been published by the Canadian Journal of Human Rights.
The article draws on a great deal of literature on the topic and hopefully makes it own contribution to thinking around how atrocities against migrants should be understood and addressed as crimes against humanity. With the forthcoming, landmark case of Khaled Mohamed Ali El Hishri before the International Criminal Court, including in relation to abuses against refugees in Libya, I join others in hoping that the subject gets renewed judicial attention, that abuses against migrants (including by Western states) end, and that, ultimately, the rights of victims are vindicated.
What follows below is the introduction the article. A full copy can be found here.
Every year for the past decade, thousands of migrants have crowded onto dinghies along the Libyan shoreline. From there, they push off and attempt what thousands before them have failed to do: traverse the Mediterranean and land safely in Europe. Some make it. Many perish. Many are caught or “rescued” by the Libyan Coast Guard, herded onto ships by armed guards and returned to the North African country. There, they are dumped into squalid, makeshift warehouses-turned- detention centers where they are exposed to risks of sexual violence, persecution, human trafficking and torture.The migrants have no legal rights in Libya and they do not end up there because Libya wants them. But when collecting migrants from the sea and bringing them back to shore, Libyan authorities are not working for themselves; their masters are in Rome and Brussels. The Libyan Coast Guard acts as an extension of European border control in international waters, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest European state. The border is no longer where it seems.
Almost 8,000 kilometers away from Libya, the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh has been the flashpoint of other atrocities. Seeking to ethnically cleanse Myanmar of the minority Muslim Rohingya population, Burmese authorities forcibly displaced some 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh. The border was a critical feature of these atrocities: the Burmese authorities wanted to ethnically cleanse Myanmar of the minority Muslim population, believing that they belonged “elsewhere”. Pushing them across the border into Bangladesh was therefore a driving motivation of the Burmese authorities. At the same time, the border played a critical role in (ongoing) attempts to address the atrocities committed against the Rohingya by the International Criminal Court (ICC). While Myanmar is not a member-state of the ICC, Bangladesh is. In 2019, judges at the ICC accepted arguments that the forcible displacement of the Rohingya was a crime that originated in Myanmar but was completed in Bangladesh, a continuous crime that “spilled” across the border and into territory where the Court had jurisdiction. The ICC prosecutor was therefore granted jurisdiction to open an investigation into international crimes committed against the Rohingya.
The following article was written by Mikel Delagrange, Senior International Legal Advisor at the Wayamo Foundation and Mark Kersten, Senior Consultant at the Wayamo Foundation and the founder of Justice in Conflict
Sudanese soldiers from the Rapid Support Forces in the East Nile province (Photo: AP)
Experts call it the worst humanitarian crisis currently facing the world. Still, no accountability for mass atrocities has been delivered.
More people than the combined populations of Ireland and Switzerland have been forced to flee their homes and communities. But no one has been held to account.
Despite reports of massacres leaving pools of blood that could be seen from space, the perpetrators still roam free.
What will it take for the people of Sudan, faced with a relentless stream of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal violence, to finally see the architects of this violence held to account?
The answer could very well lie not at any international court or tribunal, but in a regional neighbour: Kenya. In June of this year, a criminal complaint was filed in Nairobi by Legal Action Worldwide and the African Center for Justice and Peace Studies on behalf of twelve victims of atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan. The victims alleged that the RSF unlawfully detained, tortured, and raped them – and murdered their family members. These are crimes against humanity and war crimes, and the victims are demanding that Kenyan authorities investigate and prosecute the RSF fighters responsible. It is now up to Kenya’s governing authorities to decide if they will open an investigation and, in doing so, contribute to justice for the people of Sudan. We hope that they will.
In late July, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu travelled to the White House with a mission: get America to continue its war against Iran and to support him in his forthcoming election campaign. On his way to Washington, the aircraft carrying Netanyahu, the Wing of Zion, flew over multiple member-states of the International Criminal Court (ICC): Greece, Italy, France, and Canada. It was not the first time in recent months that the Israeli leader had entered the airspace of these states. But as late as September 2025, Netanyahu had been forced to take a more circuitous route to the U.S. What hasn’t changed over that time the ICC arrest warrant Netanyahu faces.
Do states have an obligation to enforce warrants in the air above them? The European states that allowed Netanyahu to cross their airspace have thus far been silent on their reasoning. According to Canadian officials responding to reports that Netanyahu’s flight over two Canadian provinces, however, “Canada does not currently link its overflight policy to law enforcement objectives except where an imminent security risk is present. This policy is regularly reviewed.”
This would suggest that states have an obligation to arrest ICC suspects only when they are boots-on the-ground, physically on their land and not if they’re at sea or in the airspace above them. As a matter of law, though, is there really such a carve out?
The International Criminal Court (Photo: Mark Kersten)
It has been barely two weeks since U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Washington’s intention to “dismantle” the International Criminal Court “brick by brick”, and now two states have announced their withdrawal from the Court. Both Venezuela and Chad have claimed that their decisions were the result of the ICC’s alleged biases. In reality, American pressure drove each to please (or appease) the Trump administration, with both Caracas and N’Djamena being pushed in recent days to leave the Court. Not surprisingly, their decisions were celebrated in the Trump administration, which is encouraging “all members of the ICC to withdraw from the Rome Statute.”
The situation facing the ICC will get worse before it gets better. The withdrawals of Venezuela and Chad will be followed by others. To save the institution, those states that still believe in the Court’s mission should meet America’s campaign for ICC withdrawals by organizing a coherent and comprehensive membership drive aimed at getting states to join the Court.
The Trump government knows that it cannot destroy the ICC alone. If it could, it would have done so long ago. It needs other states to join its cause. A logical prong in its efforts to destroy the ICC is thus to push member-states to leave the Court. The way for the ICC to survive is to directly counter this campaign by ensuring that its membership remains robust. But it cannot do this alone. It needs the help of its members.
Karim Khan speaks at the Assembly of States Parties in 2022
Member-states of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have voted to oust chief Prosecutor Karim Khan. The British lawyer has faced serious allegations of sexual misconduct by a member of his staff and was also a lightning rod for criticism from some quarters over his prosecutorial decisions, none more so that his investigation into the situation in Gaza. With Khan gone, what happens now to this beleaguered institution?
First, some clarifications. There has been a great deal of misinformation spread by certain media outlets and states about the allegations that Khan faces. This much is clear: the allegations against the now former chief Prosecutor had nothing to do with his decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant over war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza. Khan’s accuser herself has made that repeatedly clear and spoke about how she hesitated to come forward with her allegations because of how it would be weaponized by those seeking to discredit the ICC over its investigation into atrocities in Gaza. She has also said: “I fully and entirely support the court’s investigations.”
At the same time, there is no credible evidence that the allegations against Khan are part of a conspiracy orchestrated by Israel or the United States to oust him. When the accusations of sexual harassment were first made, some – including in the Court –assumed it must have been part of a plot against the institution organized by politically-motivated actors. But that does not appear to be the case.
New houses being constructed at the Israeli settlement of Eldad, south of Bethlehem in the West Bank, in 2019 (Photo: Garry Walsh/Trócaire.
In late May, nine Western leaders issued a statement regarding the situation in the West Bank. It was largely a repeat of past condemnations of settler violence and Israeli moves to displace Palestinians and establish new illegal settlements, including the so-called E1 plan. But one aspect of their statement was novel: a direct warning to businesses to avoid complicity in West Bank atrocities. This emphasis on corporate responsibility for international crimes, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, is much needed and welcome. Without addressing the profit-motivated aspects of atrocities, accountability is incomplete.
In recent months, the states behind the May statement have had their patience with Tel Aviv run thin. Five of the nine have recognized Palestine as state. Some have done so with the intention of thwarting Israel from erasing Palestine and any two-state solution. But few if any have pointed to the contributions of businesses to the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories and the relentless effort to forcibly displace Palestinians from their homes and communities. Until now.
The statement by the leaders declared that:
“Businesses should not bid for construction tenders for E1 or other settlement developments. They should be aware of legal and reputational consequences of participating in settlement construction including the risk of involving themselves in serious breaches of international law.”
The signatory states have thus issued a warning: those who run companies involved in operations in the illegally occupied West Bank could face prosecution for their involvement in serious breaches of international law, namely war crimes and crimes against humanity. Their position is in line with the Nuremberg legacy, the post-WWII trials of industrial leaders, and the understanding that mass atrocities are never committed without corporate sponsorship.
Justice in Conflict 