SAIL: International Courts

Venezuela quit the International Criminal Court. It Won't Save Them.

Dr Yusra Suedi (SAIL) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:02:37 GMT

Author: justflix (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.)

Venezuela announced it’s leaving the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The same month the ICC prosecutor was removed… and the U.S. declared war on the court.

Quite the month in The Hague!

1. What was the ICC investigating?

The ICC has been investigating the Maduro government for crimes against humanity (the arbitrary detention, torture, and persecution of political opponents and protesters).

You’ll know Maduro was captured by the U.S. on 3 January 2026 and is currently on trial in New York. That move was illegal under international law (as I covered here and here).

For those who asked me “But what was the alternative?” at the time: this is the answer.

The ICC investigation was already underway.

It is the legal path to accountability for what the Maduro government did.

2. Why did Venezuela pull out?

The government’s argument: the ICC unfairly targets countries in Africa and Latin America.

But there might be another reason.

The U.S. welcomed Venezuela’s withdrawal and praised the “new Venezuelan government’s partnership on American-led efforts to dismantle the ICC”.

So the new Venezuela government, backed by the U.S., is now apparently helping Washington dismantle the ICC.

3. Can a country just leave the ICC whenever it wants?

Yes.

(Article 127 of the Rome Statute).

Withdrawal isn’t immediate; it takes effect one year after the UN received official notification.

So Venezuela will be officially out in July 2027.

4. Does withdrawing from the ICC make the investigation go away?

No.

Even after you leave, the ICC can continue investigating and prosecuting crimes it started looking into, that occurred while you were a member.

Venezuela joined the ICC in 2000. The court has been investigating crimes allegedly committed since 2014. Leaving now doesn’t erase those years.

The ICC just can’t touch anything that happens after Venezuela’s withdrawal takes effect in July 2027.

But the investigation might be harder without Venezuela being obligated to cooperate after July 2027 (e.g., arrest suspects, hand over evidence, etc.).

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5. Who else has left the ICC and what happened?

Burundi was the first to leave the ICC in 2017, after the ICC started assessing whether to open a formal investigation there in 2016.

The ICC opened the investigation anyway, two days before Burundi’s withdrawal took effect.

It has been ongoing for ~9 years with no individual indicted/arrested and no cooperation from Burundi.

Still, it shows withdrawal doesn’t legally end an investigation.

The Philippines left in 2019, after the ICC started assessing whether to open an investigation in 2018 (see the pattern?).

But the ICC investigation continued, a warrant was issued for former President Duterte in March 2025, he was arrested and his trial opens in November 2026.

Withdrawal did not save him.

So Venezuela’s new government should take note:

Withdrawal buys you nothing and the investigation continues either way.

6. What does this mean alongside Khan’s removal; is the ICC falling apart?

The ICC has survived U.S. hostility before, but never the combination of

(1) the U.S. launching a campaign to actively dismantle it;

(2) judges being sanctioned;

(3) states pulling out;

(4) the prosecutor (Khan) being removed.

Whether it survives this depends on whether the remaining members hold firm.

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The ICC Prosecutor Was Just Fired. Here's What It Means (in 2 minutes).

Dr Yusra Suedi (SAIL) — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:06 GMT

Photo credit: Raoul Somers (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The ICC is the court in The Hague that goes after criminals (not the other one in The Hague, the ICJ, that deals with disputes between countries).

The ICC’s prosecutor is the one who opens an investigation, gathering evidence and making a case that the matter should go to trial.

They’re the catalyst for the investigations in Myanmar, Venezuela, Palestine, Afghanistan, Ukraine, etc… and for arrest warrants on the likes of Netanyahu and Putin.

Karim Khan has held that role since 2021, but just got fired.

It’s the first time in the ICC’s 24-year history that a sitting chief prosecutor has been voted out of office.

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1. Why was Karim Khan fired?

The vote focused on allegations of a sexual relationship between Khan and a member of his office staff.

Khan has consistently denied any wrongdoing. His supporters insist it is a politicised case in reaction to his pursuit of arrest warrants against Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

This is the core controversy of this saga.

To be clear: misconduct allegations are serious and must be taken seriously. But the timing, the geopolitical context, and Khan’s own insistence that this is retaliation will hang over this removal permanently. The court cannot fully escape that shadow.

2. Who fired him?

82 out of 125 ICC Member States voted to remove Khan: well above the 63 needed.

Under Article 46 of the Rome Statute, a prosecutor can be removed for serious misconduct or a serious breach of their duties, with an absolute majority of ICC Member States.

3. What was the process for removing him like?

Long (almost two years)... and messy.

The Rome Statute sets out the grounds for removal, but gives almost no guidance on how the process should actually work in practice… probably because no one anticipated it would ever be needed.

So when it was, everyone kind of improvised: there were disagreements about how much proof was enough to justify removing him, the voting procedure, and who had authority to do what. More detail on the procedural issues in my last post. The whole thing looked like it was being stitched together as it went along.

Khan’s team argued that the process was fundamentally unfair.

So that doesn’t help the ICC’s optics either.

4. Who will be the next prosecutor?

We don’t know yet.

But after this incident, whoever takes this role must be prepared for immense pressure.

Pressure to be of high moral character, obviously (as Rome Statute Article 42 requires).

Pressure from the U.S., who declared war on the ICC only days ago.

And — if you believe the removal was a response to the Netanyahu warrant — pressure to decide whether to actively pursue it… or let it die.

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5. Can Netanyahu’s arrest warrant be dropped by the next prosecutor?

No.

In this case, the warrants were already reviewed and approved by the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber: the small panel of judges whose job is to oversee a case before it goes to trial.

So the warrants stay, unless those judges decide to drop it (Article 58(4) of the Rome Statute).

(The U.S. is pressuring them to through sanctions, but so far they’re holding firm.)

Still, a new prosecutor could still slow down the process significantly… to an almost-halt.

At this stage, before Netanyahu is arrested or appears in court, the prosecutor is still investigating, still pushing states to cooperate, and still maintaining diplomatic pressure on countries to arrest him if he enters their territory.

A new prosecutor who stops doing those things (e.g.: stops investigating, doesn’t add any new charges, sends fewer cooperation requests, etc.) can effectively let the case go cold without ever formally dropping it.

6. How will the next prosecutor be selected?

The same body of 125 states who just voted to remove Khan will elect his replacement, by secret ballot.

Expect the process to take months, be closely watched and fiercely contested.

The outcome might tell us a lot about the direction the ICC intends to take.

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A 3-Minute Update on the International Criminal Court’s Chaos Era

Dr Yusra Suedi (SAIL) — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:45:53 GMT

In December 2025 I caught you up on the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s trials, tribulations, and triumphs. It’s time for an update.

1. The ICC Prosecutor (Karim Khan) is still caught up in a scandal

It’s been hard keeping up with this messy story. I’ve got you.

May 2024: A member of Khan’s office accused him of sexual misconduct. An internal ICC investigation was opened and closed within a week, because the victim refused to cooperate with it.

November 2024: The head of the 125-member Assembly of States Parties launched a UN investigation instead. Both the victim and Khan cooperated.

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December 2025: UN investigators submitted a confidential 150-page report with 5000 (!) pages of evidence to a panel of three independent judges. They cleared Khan; to them, the evidence didn’t prove he carried out sexual misconduct.

March 2026: The judges cleared him.

June 2026: The Bureau (a diplomatic/political body and the ICC’s executive/oversight committee made up of a President, 2 Vice Presidents and 18 rotating ICC member states) rejected the judges’ decision.

Plus, 14 out of 21 voted to temporarily suspend Khan.

To them, he is guilty of sexual misconduct.

July 2026: A special session of the Assembly of States Parties is scheduled for 24 July 2026 in New York to vote on his fate. (Stay tuned for a SAIL post then!)

The issue is controversial for at least three reasons:

First, should the view of politically appointed diplomats overrule the view of a panel of independent judges?

Second, the Bureau changed how the vote works.

Originally, there were supposed to be two separate votes: first on whether Khan did something wrong (and how serious it was), then (only if needed!) a second vote on whether to actually remove him.

Instead, states voted once, deciding both questions together.

Splitting the vote lets states judge the facts without the pressure of also deciding his fate.

Combining them blurs that line, and doing it right after the judges cleared him makes it look like the rules were changed to get a different result.

Third, all of this is happening while the US is punishing the ICC with sanctions, because the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.

Khan’s supporters say this is why he’s under attack: not because of what he’s accused of, but because he pushed forward with those warrants.

The bigger picture is that this scandal could harm trust in the ICC (“if its own prosecutor is under investigation, how solid is its moral authority?”).

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2. ICC judges are fighting back against U.S. sanctions

Trump slapped sanctions (here and here) on 9 ICC staff members, because the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.

Sanctions mean those ICC staff members can’t access money in a bank account, use credit cards, use Amazon/Google, and more.

The update is those judges have filed a lawsuit before US courts, arguing the decision is unlawful. If they win, sanctions could possibly be unfrozen. Let’s see what happens.

3. A bunch of countries have pulled out of the ICC

Last year Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger announced they’re leaving the ICC.

Now, they’ve actually gone ahead and pulled the trigger.

It’ll take one year from now to enter into effect, so they’re still parties until June 2027.

The ICC should take advantage to progress as much as possible in the ongoing Mali investigation between now and then.

After June 2027, the Mali investigation can still continue, but will be harder without Mali being obligated to cooperate (e.g., arrest suspects, hand over evidence, etc.)

Better news: Hungary was on track to leave the ICC… until a new government came to power and reversed the decision.

The new leader has even said Hungary will arrest Netanyahu if he ever sets foot there. Quite the reversal, given Hungary used to be one of his biggest allies.

… I’ll end this post on that positive note!

The topic of this post was requested by SAIL subscriber Aditya Roy (@4128). If you have a topic making news headlines you'd like covered, drop a comment or contact hello@learnsail.org.

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Can Your Boss Stop You From Striking? International Law Just Said No.

Dr Yusra Suedi (SAIL) — Fri, 22 May 2026 07:02:06 GMT

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) was asked to answer one question: Does workers’ rights to strike count as a protected right under a major international labour treaty from 1948?

Yesterday, it answered: Yes.

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What’s the back story?

The treaty in question is called Convention No. 87. It was adopted by the International Labour Organization (ILO): a UN agency made up of governments, employers, and workers’ groups. Countries that sign up to it promise to protect workers’ rights to form unions and organise.

But here’s the thing: the treaty never actually says that the right to strike is protected too.

This wasn’t an accident. When governments, employers, and workers’ groups wrote the treaty, they couldn’t agree on strikes… so they left it out.

Over time, though, international labour experts started treating the right to strike as an assumed, obvious part of the deal (‘If you can organise, you can strike’). But employers eventually pushed back and said: “Wait… we never agreed to that.”

So they asked the ICJ to settle it.

What was each side arguing?

Workers’ groups said: The right to strike is so essential to the right to organise that it’s automatically included, even if the treaty doesn’t explicitly say so.

Employers’ groups said: The treaty was deliberately silent on strikes. You can’t just read in obligations that were specifically left out during negotiations. If we’d wanted strikes included, we would have said so.

Why does this matter?

Convention No. 87 is one of the most widely accepted labour treaties in the world. Chances are the country you live in has signed up to respect it.

The ICJ opinion doesn’t create the right to strike from scratch (it’s already in a major human rights treaty). But including it in Convention No. 87 is powerful because of how it gets enforced:

If you're a worker anywhere in the world and your government bans strikes, unions can now file complaints with the ILO citing this opinion… and your government faces real international pressure to back down.

So next time you go out to strike and your boss says you can’t? Check if your country is part of Convention No. 87. If it is, tell them: the ICJ said my right to strike is protected under international law.

(And drop a comment if you need a lawyer 😁)

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The U.S. Goes to Court To Defend Israel Against Genocide Charges (in 2 minutes)

How the International Criminal Court Ended Up in Its Chaos Era (Explained in 2 minutes)

The U.S. Goes to Court To Defend Israel Against Genocide Charges (in 2 minutes)

Dr Yusra Suedi (SAIL) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 08:01:32 GMT

Four more countries just showed up to the world’s most watched court case: Namibia, Hungary and Fiji and… the U.S.!

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What’s the South Africa v. Israel case?

In December 2023, South Africa sued Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ): the world’s top court for disputes between countries.

It accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

That’s a treaty that 153 countries have formally committed to (including both South Africa and Israel) that outlaws genocide and requires every member to prevent it.

What are “interventions”?

While the Court works through the case, other countries can formally weigh in.

There are two ways to do it, but the relevant one here is Article 63: if a case turns on how to interpret a treaty, any country that is party to that treaty has the right to jump in and declare they want to explain what they think the treaty means.

Crucially, if a state gets to explain, the Court’s interpretation in its judgment will be equally binding on them — so they have real skin in the game.

Why are these interventions a big deal?

First, the case has become one of the most closely watched disputes ever heard by the ICJ.

Second, 22 countries so far – including the U.S. – have intervened… which is extraordinary!

Historically, interventions were rare and dry… and with one intervenor per case, at best.

Now they’ve become a way for multiple countries to signal who they support politically, and publicly plant their flag.

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What are the 22 countries saying?

The ICJ doesn’t find genocide easily. Across the entire Yugoslav conflict — years of war, hundreds of thousands dead — it found genocide in just one place: Srebrenica. And even that single finding, in Bosnia v. Serbia (2007), came with a sting: the Court refused to hold Serbia responsible for it. In Croatia v. Serbia (2015), it found no genocide at all. Both outcomes were widely criticised.

So what’s at stake with these 22 interventions is essentially: how easy or hard should it be to prove genocide happened in Gaza?

18 are siding with South Africa.

Their arguments broadly push the Court toward a more expansive reading of the Convention — e.g.: assess intent holistically, not act by act; recognise that children’s particular vulnerability lowers the harm threshold; and don’t make this impossibly difficult to prove.

The message, broadly, is: the Convention exists to protect people. Use it.

4 are siding with Israel: the USA, Hungary, Fiji and Paraguay (Paraguay says its neutral, but its legal arguments are pro-Israel)

Their arguments push the opposite way — keep the bar high. E.g.: Genocidal intent must be the only reasonable conclusion from the evidence. Civilian casualties in urban warfare don’t prove genocide. Letting this case succeed risks turning every armed conflict into a genocide claim before the ICJ.

The message, broadly, is: genocide is the gravest crime in international law. Don’t dilute it.

The U.S. goes furthest: calling the allegations simply false, framing them as part of a long-running effort to undermine Israel, and reminding the Court that the U.S. helped write the Convention, so its interpretation should carry weight.

Is it a good thing that they’ve intervened?

Politically, yes. It signals that this is an issue the world is watching, and puts states’ views on the record for history.

Procedurally, it’s more complicated. More interveners means more written submissions, more arguments for the Court to work through, and more time. And while the lawyers argue, Gazans are still dying.

What next for the 22 interveners?

They’ve filed their declarations saying they want to intervene. The Court will decide whether to let each one go further.

If admitted, interveners get to file fuller legal arguments later in the process, and may get to speak at the main hearings too — though that’s the Court’s call.

Neither South Africa nor Israel is obliged to engage with any of it... But both have every incentive to lean on the interventions that help them and push back on the ones that don’t.

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What next for South Africa and Israel?

The case is now grinding through the full legal process: South Africa filed its main written arguments in October 2024, and Israel filed its counter-arguments on 12 March 2026.

South Africa has the right to reply to Israel (and probably will), and Israel the right to reply to South Africa’s reply (so we should expect that!).

After that, oral hearings will take place.

A final ruling is still years away — 2028 is my guess.

Will the ICJ say Israel has committed genocide in Gaza?

Maybe, maybe not.

But worth noting: the Court is simultaneously dealing with another genocide case — whether Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya.

That judgment will likely come first, and the way the Court reasons through it will be a strong signal of how it might approach this one.

(A few of the same countries have intervened in that case too.)

Stay tuned!

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How the International Criminal Court Ended Up in Its Chaos Era (Explained in 2 minutes)

Dr Yusra Suedi (SAIL) — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 09:01:31 GMT

This week, the Assembly of State Parties to the International Criminal Court (ICC) is in full swing.

The ICC is the court in The Hague that goes after criminals (not the other one in The Hague, the ICJ, that deals with disputes between countries). The ICC was established through an agreement called the Rome Statute that 125 countries are signed on to. They meet every year to check in on how the ICC is doing.

And, well… It’s not doing so well right now. Why?

The Prosecutor (Karim Khan) is caught up in a scandal

The Prosecutor is the one who opens an investigation, gathering evidence and making a case that the matter should go to trial. Big job! Karim Khan has held that role since 2021.

He’s on temporary leave while under investigation for serious sexual misconduct, which he denies. In the meantime, his two deputy prosecutors are running things.

This is a big deal because it could harm trust in the ICC (“If its own prosecutor is under investigation, how solid is its moral authority?”).

The U.S. is sanctioning ICC judges

Trump has twice (here and here) slapped sanctions on 9 (!) ICC staff members.

Why? They targeted the U.S. and Israel (the ICC declared an arrest warrant on Benjamin Netanyahu, and investigations concerning Israel are ongoing).

Sanctions mean those ICC staff members can’t do things like use credit cards (no matter where they were issued, because of U.S. control over global payment systems), use everyday services (like Microsoft, Uber, Amazon, etc.), or carry out basic transactions.

The ICC decided to switch from using Microsoft to an alternative, but the other sanctions have made life and work challenging lately!

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A bunch of countries are pulling out of the ICC

This year Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Hungary all said they’re leaving, joining Burundi (left in 2017) and the Philippines (left in 2019).

(Everyone’s cool with international justice… until it comes after them!)

That leaves 121 member states (plenty!)... but it stings a little.

But… the show must go on!

Despite the chaos, the ICC has had four wins lately.

First, it has finally built a solid case against Joseph Kony, leader of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army. Even though he’s still on the run (remember the ‘Where’s Kony?’ viral video, i.e. #Kony2012? No answer yet!), the ICC officially ruled last month that there’s enough evidence he committed serious crimes, so the case will move forward in his absence.

Second, Ali Kushayb who helped the Sudanese government kill innocents in Darfur (2003-4) was found guilty by the ICC in October 2025. One step closer to jail!

Third, former Philippine President Duterte is now in detention in The Hague for alleged serious crimes linked to his deadly anti-drug campaign (2016-2022), until his trial begins.

Fourth, Khaled El Hishri, involved in killings and torture during the 2011 uprising in Libya, was caught in Germany and handed over to the ICC this week.

Phew!

But can the ICC survive these troubling times? What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

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