Name: What is the ICC, and why is the US threatening new sanctions on it? | REUTERS
Uploaded: 2025-12-13T16:51:41.000Z
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The Trump administration wants the International Criminal Court to ensure it does not investigate the US President or his top officials by changing the court's founding document.

That's according to a Trump official who says the court faces new US Sanctions if it doesn't comply with that demand.

The court has long been criticized by the US as infringing on its sovereignty, and

Washington has never been a member state.

But what is the icc and how does it work?

The ICC acts as a court of last resort with the power to prosecute heads of state.

That founding document Trump officials want changed.

The ICC Rome Statute asks all 124 states that have signed it to arrest and hand over anyone subject to an ICC arrest warrant if they set foot on their territory.

But as Jerry Simpson, law professor at the London School of Economics, points out, the court has no enforcement mechanism, which is why individuals accused of war crimes rarely face trial.

It's very hard to enforce an arrest warrant.

We've been here before with the South Africans in Al Bashir in Sudan, and

there the court didn't even make an order.

So then what goes on when states don't comply with the court?

If a country doesn't arrest someone, they're obliged to.

They get referred back to the ICC's member states and ultimately to the UN Security Council.

But the court can't do much else than that, in the example of Omar Al Bashir, the Sudanese president in indicted in 2009 for genocide in Darfur.

He stayed in office for a decade after his warrant before being toppled in a coup, all while traveling to several ICC members, including Kenya, Jordan, and

South Africa, who all declined to detain him.

If the state party fails to comply with an arrest warrant, the case can go before the court, and

the court can then order the state party to comply and can refer the matter to what's called the assembly of State Parties, or ultimately the Security Council, if it's the Security Council that first referred the matter.

So the icc, the court itself, really can't do a great deal.

So why is the demand coming now from the Trump administration?

The Trump official who spoke to Reuters did not say what issues the administration worries could become the subject of an ICC investigation, and

declined to say when Washington began making its demand to the court.

But the official also cited what they called open chatter in the international legal community that the court could target Trump and his top officials in 2029, when the Republican president's term ends starting in September.

The US military has killed more than 80 people in deadly strikes against suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean and off the Pacific coasts of Latin America.

When asked if the administration was making its demands of the ICC over worries the court may pursue charges in relation US Conduct in Venezuela, the Trump official declined to elaborate.