OPINION
The lighthouse
Editorial by N3R1-70
Series “The Court under siege” · 6 of 6
On 9 October, a few hours apart, two things happened. In Oslo, the Nobel Peace Prize went to Navi Pillay, a former judge of the International Criminal Court. In Washington, the United States sanctioned that same Court as an institution, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised to paralyse it (our analysis). The sanctions had been ready since September, and there is no evidence that the two decisions are linked. But together they raise a simple question.
The Court has no police force. To arrest anyone it depends on states, and states often do not do it. Vladimir Putin, wanted since 2023, was received with full honours in Mongolia and Tajikistan, two member states of the Court. Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted since 2024, was welcomed in Hungary while Hungary was still a member (the unexecuted warrants). So why go to such lengths to fight a court whose warrants often stay on paper?
What a warrant does without handcuffs
Because an unexecuted warrant is not a warrant without effect.
It changes the map of the world for the person it names. In August 2023 Putin did not go to the BRICS summit in Johannesburg. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa had written in a court filing that his country, a member of the Court, had "obvious problems" with arresting him; the solution was a video link (PBS, from AP). Since then, every trip has been a calculation.
It does not expire. Under Article 29 of the Rome Statute, these crimes are not subject to any statute of limitations (we explained it here). The warrant waits. Ratko Mladić was indicted by the Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in July 1995 and arrested in May 2011, sixteen years later (ICTY). Rodrigo Duterte had taken the Philippines out of the Court in 2019; in March 2025 he was handed over to The Hague, and in April 2026 he was committed to trial (the ICC's fugitives). Governments change. The record remains.
And the record is what stays. A warrant or a judgment of the Court is not an opinion. It is a finding reached by rules: evidence gathered, witnesses heard and put on the record, an accused who has the right to defend himself. That archive outlives those who contest it.
Where the sanctions strike
Those who want to stop the Court know this. That is why the sanctions do not target its judgments, which cannot be erased, but its ability to write new ones: salaries, banks, suppliers, software. In 2025, according to the AP news agency, prosecutor Karim Khan, personally sanctioned, had lost access to his Microsoft email; the company denied having suspended its services to the Court (heise). The Court nonetheless decided to switch to European software (Irish Legal News). Today a US Treasury licence keeps salaries and services legal until 7 April 2027. After that, if nobody has made "progress", the light goes out.
What I think
What follows is my assessment, not a fact.
If the Court falls, our lighthouse falls.
A lighthouse does not stop ships. It does not save them from heavy seas, it does not pull them off the rocks. It does one thing only: it shows where the rocks are, to everyone, every night, even to those who do not want to see them. And whoever runs aground on them cannot say they were not there.
That is what the Court does. It has no police force, and perhaps it never will. Its decisions can go unenforced for years. But they stay in the record of history: indelible documentation. And that is exactly why they are feared. If they were mere paper, no government would spend sanctions on a court. You sanction what carries weight.
I know the lighthouse mostly comforts those who write history. It does not comfort those dying today in Gaza, in Sudan, in Ukraine. A Ukrainian mother waiting for a child deported to Russia does not need a record: she needs her child. The Court saves no one in real time, and those who defend it must not claim otherwise. But it prevents anyone from saying, one day, that it did not happen, or that nobody knew. It is no accident that Navi Pillay dedicated her prize to the survivors.
I also know the lighthouse is not perfect. In more than twenty years the Court has handed down few convictions, almost all against Africans. Its chief prosecutor has been removed. The investigation into US troops in Afghanistan was scaled back by the Court itself, in 2021. These are real criticisms, and we have written them. But a light that shines badly is repaired. It is not switched off.
There is one more detail that should not be forgotten. Those who want to put out this light are, each for their own reasons, Washington and Moscow: Moscow has convicted the prosecutor and eight judges in absentia (Fifteen years for a warrant); Washington has sanctioned judges and prosecutors, and now the whole Court. When two powers that trust each other on nothing agree on a single target, it means that target shines its light on both of them.
The six months of the licence are now in the hands of the 125 states that belong to the Court, Italy included. They can truly protect it: banks and suppliers beyond the reach of the US Treasury, a European shield that works, a prosecutor chosen without conditions. Or they can bargain, and discover that the price is a lighthouse that stays lit but no longer shows certain rocks. A lighthouse that goes dark when the wrong ship passes is not a lighthouse. It is stage scenery.
To the governments that in recent days have said they defend the Court, my own included, I ask one thing only: to defend it even when it costs them. Even when the wanted man lands on their own soil. Italy sent Osama Almasri back to Libya on a state flight, and the Court referred it to the other member states for that reason (our analysis). Whoever defends the lighthouse cannot switch it off when it suits them.
Sources: PBS, from AP · ICTY · heise · Irish Legal News
Related pieces: Six months for the Court: Washington sanctions the entire ICC and opens a negotiation over its independence · Two warrants, zero arrests · Fifteen Years for a Warrant