In response to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement of a campaign to “systematically disable” the International Criminal Court’s “ability to operate”, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said:
“The Secretary of State’s reprehensible attack on the ICC is the latest in a series of escalating and existential assaults by the Trump administration on the very idea of international justice and a rules-based order, and on the international institutions painstakingly put in place over the last 80 years to ensure global peace and stability. This attack came on the very day the ICC’s Deputy Prosecutor was in Chad meeting Darfuri victims of war crimes and atrocities in Sudan. The contrast could not be starker: while victims seek justice, the US government is seeking to undermine one of the world’s most important mechanisms for delivering it.
“In trying to discredit the Court, Rubio instead highlights its very purpose: ensuring accountability when those with the power to act choose not to. His arguments read like a tacit admission of wrongdoing – suggesting concerns that US officials could one day be held accountable for actions that may amount to crimes under international law, including deporting people to torture in El Salvador’s prisons or the campaign of extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The only reason he would have to fear the ICC is if US officials have committed such crimes outside the United States and the US government is unwilling to hold them genuinely accountable.”
