In October 2026, the United States imposed sweeping sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), the latest escalation in its campaign to undermine and “dismantle” the Court. The US objects to the ICC investigating or prosecuting American nationals and has also opposed its investigation into senior Israeli officials over war crimes in Gaza. The sanctions are troubling not only because they threaten the Court’s ability to operate independently, but because they expose a deeper question: does international law apply to everyone, or only to those without power?
International law has never been free from hypocrisy. Great powers have often defended global rules while exempting themselves from them. Critics are right to point to double standards, selective enforcement and the influence of geopolitics. Yet these failures do not invalidate international law. They demonstrate why it is needed.
The modern international legal order emerged from the catastrophe of two world wars. Its foundation was a simple but transformative idea: that power alone should not determine what states may do and that even leaders can be held accountable for their actions.
The Nuremberg Trials established that principle. Sovereignty could no longer serve as a shield against responsibility. Political leaders, military commanders and officials could be judged for crimes committed in the name of the state. No one, in principle, stood above the law.
That achievement is now under threat.
Too many governments support international law only when it targets their enemies. Courts are praised when they investigate rivals and attacked when they scrutinise allies. Human rights are defended selectively. Legal principles are embraced when convenient and dismissed when politically costly.
The ICC exists because some crimes are so grave that they cannot be left solely to national governments. Its work depends on being able to investigate allegations independently, including when those under investigation are politically powerful or have the backing of powerful states. When governments respond to investigations with sanctions and threats rather than allowing the legal process to proceed, they undermine the Court’s ability to hold individuals accountable.
The issue reaches far beyond The Hague. It concerns the future of the international order itself. One vision holds that powerful states should remain the final judges of their own conduct. The other insists that universal legal standards must apply equally to all, regardless of military strength, wealth or political influence.
The stakes are visible in conflicts from Ukraine to Palestine. Circumstances differ, but the principle is the same. Laws governing aggression, occupation, civilian protection and war crimes either apply to everyone or they lose all credibility. International law cannot survive as a tool used against adversaries while ignored when allies stand accused.
Britain has a particular responsibility in this debate. It has strongly supported accountability for Russian actions in Ukraine and rightly argued that those responsible for war crimes should face justice. The same standard must apply elsewhere.
The allegations arising from the war in Gaza are therefore a test of Britain’s commitment to the rule of law. The International Court of Justice’s provisional ruling in South Africa’s genocide case triggered binding obligations on states to take active steps to prevent a genocide in Gaza. Yet Britain and other Western governments have continued to provide Israel with arms and diplomatic support, while failing to exert the meaningful pressure needed to compel Israel to change its conduct. This failure to act has helped entrench the impunity that makes international accountability all the more urgent.
Britain must therefore stand firmly behind the International Criminal Court in the face of US sanctions and efforts to obstruct its work, and ensure that those accused of war crimes, whatever their nationality or position, are subjected to due process and independent legal scrutiny. The same principle must apply to any British citizen alleged to have committed crimes under international law, including through complicity in the war crimes. (Distinguished journalist Peter Oborne’s 2025 book Complicit deals with this last point very clearly.)
The central question is not whether international law is perfect. It never has been. The question is whether law will constrain power, or whether power will dictate the law.
If states abandon the principle of equal accountability, the world will increasingly be governed by force, coercion and impunity. If they defend it, imperfect institutions can still provide a measure of justice and restraint.
The lesson of Nuremberg remains as urgent today as it was in 1945: no state, no leader and no individual should stand above the law. Abandon that principle, and we abandon one of humanity’s strongest safeguards against violence and tyranny. Defend it, and the promise of a more just international order remains alive.
* John Kelly is a member of the West Midlands Regional Executive, former Chair of Warwick District Liberal Democrats and Secretary of Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine.
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6 Comments
John is, of course, right to remind us all of the need to uphold international law.
Today we’ve seen Trump congratulate the man he had previously distanced himself from (for luring him into a ridiculous and unwinnable war against Iran) by saying Netanyahu is now totally admirable. He has done this simply because admitting he was duped will play badly in the midterms.
The fact is that men like Trump are an insult to the leaders of the free world who have gone before him, and that if we could use the will of the people to assert democratic power over the mechanisms of state, that kind of person would be the laughing stock they deserve to be.
What I find particularly painful is to think of those who wrote the words of the Geneva Convention IV and the Genocide Convention turning in their graves as modern political appointees play at being politicians, while some of us know they are so shamefully inadequate. Every day in Gaza, and now in the West Bank, that condemnation of political failure is written in the blood of innocents.
Thank you for saying this, international law is our best hope for a fairer and more peaceful world, I worry the memory of why it came about in the first place is too easily forgotten now.
Might I suggest the book East-West Street for those who are interested in the history of how it was developed? It explores the lives of the two international lawyers, one of which developed the legal idea of crimes against humanity and the other who developed the legal idea of genocide, and how they reached those ideas based on their experiences prosecuting the Nazi Governor of Lviv in what is now Ukraine.
“ Yet these failures do not invalidate international law. They demonstrate why it is needed.”
Actually, no. These ‘failures’ as you call it actually show that the concept of international law is nothing more that a tactic used by the most powerful to enforce order on other countries. The best example of this is NATO forcing Serbia to give up control of part of its internationally recognised territory in 1999 and then most Western Countries jumping to recognise Kosovo as an independent country – yet Western countries continue to argue that international law has prevented borders from being changed by force since the Second World War….
Jana, it’s true that post-World War Two international rules of war designed to protect civilians have been broken by Britain the USA and France, the ‘great powers’ which were largely responsible for creating them. But the brutal treatment of local resistance in Kenya or Algeria was kept secret, as was, initially, the bombing of Cambodia. What is being done to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank – both the killing of civilians and the ethnic cleansing – is happening in plain sight.
The government of Israel shows no regret or remorse, and indeed, has recently been congratulated by the US president. This is why John is so right to say the ICC must take action and must be supported. It might seem hypocritical given past transgressions by “powerful” countries, but the case against Israel can’t be argued to have been weakened by the past mistakes of its accusers.
@Jana 19th Oct ’26 – 10:20am…
Jana, Sadly you are correct. ‘interference’ and regime change are OK when ‘our side’ does it but illegal when the ‘other side’ do it.. Sporting/entertainment competitions are either ‘open’ or ‘closed’ to those involved in exactly the same acts depending on who they are..
The list goes on..
Great article and a very important topic! To add an important point of clarity relating to Britain’s treaty obligations to prevent genocide, it is important to clarify when those obligations are/were triggered. The UK’s legal duty to prevent genocide is triggered by the existence of a serious risk of genocide and does not depend on an ICJ case proceeding. It does not arise from ICJ provisional measures and nor formal genocide determination. ICJ proceedings, as in the case of South Africa’s case against Israel add evidence and heighten expectations, but they are not the necessary trigger for legal obligation. If South Africa had never taken its case against Israel, Britain would still be obligated to act based on the evidence at hand.
It is important to push this point so as to put as much daylight as possible between excuses that pretend to need to wait for ICJ rulings and the legal reality that Britain’s obligations arose well before South Africa brought their case to the ICJ. Any government statement or media angle that brings up the ongoing ICJ case as prerequisite for action, or even just use of the word ‘genocide’, are contributing to the undermining of international law by willfully misleading the public as to its most basic elements. Britain’s negligence of international law is of course meaningly magnified as the South Africa case and other sources of evidence add to the overwhelming evidence of genocide continuing against the Palestinians.