In the 2025 annual report of the office of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan’s face looms on a screen over the United Nations Security Council, as he briefs them on Libya for the last time. Shortly after, the prosecutor took a voluntary leave of absence while allegations against him of sexual misconduct are being investigated.
The report entitled “Resilient Justice” looks back on the three years he had been in post, reporting on progress on his vaunted 10-point strategic plan, including point 10: ‘Improve the working environment of the Office and ensure a respectful working culture’. Its introduction though is penned jointly by the two deputy prosecutors. “References to the ICC Prosecutor are few and far between,” notes Sergey Vasiliev of the Open University. “It feels as if the institutional “erasure” of the third ICC Prosecutor has begun,” he says, “even before the current improvised, imperfect, and non-transparent investigation process has run its course”.
Times are tough. Deputy Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang spoke to the diplomats at the start of this year’s Assembly of States Parties (ASP) about “meeting a challenge for which we have prepared ourselves and which we will face united and determined”, while Nazhat Shameen Khan, the other deputy prosecutor, delivered the annual report to an audience including journalists, discussing the need to “display resilience in the face of quite difficult and challenging circumstances”.
Those circumstances include US sanctions on the three top members of the court’s prosecution team, also against six judges making up one third of the ICC bench, plus sanctions on Palestinian organisations feeding information for the court’s investigations. The court’s Japanese president, judge Tomoko Akane noted separately that ICC judges, herself included, are subject to arrest warrants from the Russian Federation and have been indicted which “will have an obvious impact on their personal security”.
Against that highly pressurised backdrop, questions running in the corridors of the ASP were how far the meeting would be overshadowed by the media frenzy detailing the sexual misconduct allegations, and how far states would decide to support the court.
No discussion on sexual misconduct
Maria Elena Vignoli of Human Rights Watch had been concerned that “there was a real risk” that the sexual misconduct investigation would have “sucked the air out of an ASP, where the air was very much needed to push for support for the court.”
Only one side event was held to discuss working environment issues. Alix Vuillemin of Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice was one of the organisers. She told the room that while “none of us are blind to how painful this discussion is, how painful this topic is and has become… avoiding this conversation will not protect the court”.
The person who has brought the complaint against prosecutor Khan attended the event, sitting at the back of the large hall. She asked to remain anonymous and shared with Justice Info a statement she had been prepared to make if asked. She wanted the leadership of the court to stop hiding behind procedure and start “confronting its failures openly and honestly” saying “there is an elephant in this room and no amount of polished words will make it go away”.
Vuillemin told Justice Info that “what we had as a secondary aim of this panel was to address the ‘elephant in the room’, without talking about the elephant itself. We could not have an entire ASP go by, we felt, without having at least a side event to address the broader issues.”
The misconduct investigation – delegated to UN investigators by the president of the ASP, Finnish ambassador to Brussels Païvi Kaukoranta – has no end date yet in sight. More than a month ago, she told her colleagues that while “she shared the frustration of the length of the proceedings” she also “asked for patience” because “intervening in the investigation would risk the integrity of the process”. It is rumoured that the report may be delivered at the beginning of 2026. It will be then sent to an ad hoc panel of three judges, whose names aren’t public, to consider the established facts to determine whether misconduct — if any — has occurred.
Vuillemin acknowledges that “the process may not be perfect, but it’s the process that we have”. And “as civil society at least, the only thing we can do is call for more transparency, and for the process to be clearer: Why is it taking so long? Why are there no deadlines?” Vasiliev though, is concerned that already, despite the lack of an outcome, “some states and other actors feel quite ready simply to ‘move on’ and ‘turn the page’”. Whatever the panel’s determinations, some states see the whole affair as “toxic” he says, partly because it has dragged on for too long. This attitude is “problematic” he says, because “it risks disconnecting the possible removal of an elected official from the very allegations that triggered the investigation. It opens the door to unrelated considerations being invoked to render his return unlikely or impossible; this is unacceptable and would set a troubling precedent”.
No discussion on the budget
The usual rhythm of an ASP is a last-minute nail-biting discussion on the budget where it often comes down to “states fighting over a zero point zero something percent,” says Vignoli. This time though was “strange” because it was “so quick”. Mainly, she thinks, because “the court was really conservative in its request”. “The court has been clear that it’s taking all the measures it can to weather the various threats and attacks that are coming its way”, she continues. The budget was positioned as “part of the multi-tiered strategy to protect the court”.
No Congolese NGOs and No Nigeria Investigation
There were noticeably fewer NGO representatives at this year’s event. Around 200 members of the coalition for the international criminal court (CICC) attended this year compared to around 300 last year, confirmed Zoe Paris the coalition advocacy head. “The entire delegation of CICC members from DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] had their visas rejected, representing 60 people”, she told Justice Info.
For some situations, there is still no apparent progress from the prosecution, which “continues to betray victims in the northeast of Nigeria” says Matt Cannock of Amnesty International pointing to the prosecutor’s own decision five years ago that all the criteria has been met, and that there was no prospect of complementarity. “That limbo is intolerable”, he says. “Victims expectations are completely going down and it’s almost a forgotten situation”, he adds.
No further forward on non-cooperation
For the first time states debated non-cooperation. With arrest warrants being ignored by Hungary and Mongolia and with no resolution yet on Italy’s failure to transfer a Libyan suspect, this was an opportunity to get states to “discuss their own responsibilities to enforce non-cooperation findings,” says Vignoli, underlining that individual bilateral states relationship can be a powerful tool. Human Rights Watch and others wanted states to “commit to their obligations to execute all of the arrest warrants,” and said they are watching out for any attempt to carve out exceptions during peace negotiations – that would be “a bit of a slippery slope,” says Vignoli.
But nothing very concrete came out of this debate. Antonia Pereira de Sousa, from the court’s registry, repeated details of the channels of communication for states to use in order to “avoid a status on non-cooperation”. The ASP president rounded the discussion up, stressing that it was the “first of a kind” intended to be “positive” despite being about “very sensitive issues”. She concluded by calling on states to abide by the rules they had set up for themselves.
It’s now a question of “being very realistic”
Deputy prosecutor Khan said that in the last period “we saw the highest number of arrest warrants issued, with 17 new public warrants since 2023, and several more under seal that of course we may not speak of”. “Last year we all thought that 2026 would be a year with empty courtrooms”. Instead, she points to the arrest of former Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte, and a few hours later came the announcement of the transfer of a Libyan suspect from Germany.
Prospects though for further big arrest warrants look unlikely. Nazhat Shameen Khan played down expectations, saying that while she does not “anticipate that there will be a decreased demand for the investigative work of the office,” she does see “a need for us to really focus on organising our work efficiently. And it means being very, very careful about selection criteria, being very careful about selecting parts of investigations to prioritise. We have to accept that investigations cannot go on forever”. “We can’t keep coming back to states parties and say, look, this year we want over three new situations, and we have no people to do the investigation. It’s a question of being very realistic”.
No rocking the boat (but not drowning)
One year ago, at the last ASP, the court’s president warned that US sanctions were coming. In the meantime, “states parties have not been entirely anaemic in the face of this ‘doomsday scenario’,” says Vasiliev with what looks like “strenuous diplomatic and organisational efforts behind the scenes to secure the Court’s viability and operations.”
Evidence of this was within the ASP resolutions which reflected the delicate combination of 125 member states interests – via a “language that is very diplomatic, quite vanilla” says Cannock.
“US sanctions on the court seem to have had several effects on states,” he says. “They’re so egregious, so big-hammer, small-nail that there’s now almost a siege mentality among states,” which has led to “a sort of a resilient joint message”.
Vasiliev notes the insertion of worrying language of “constructive dialogue” that “crept into several statements during the general debate” and of a final declaration encouraging the “dialogue between States Parties and Non-States Parties”. “Of course we’re open to engagement with any non-states party, but if it’s on the terms of the sanctions, and with a state that is already sanctioning the court, that is untenable for us. That’s impossible”, Cannock says.
“Ultimately”, says Vasiliev, “the commitment of states parties to the accountability principles underlying the Statute — and their willingness to safeguard the Court’s independence — still remains the main Achilles heel of the whole system. I’d rather be overdramatic than complacent about the risks: any such ‘constructive dialogues’ need to be watched closely”.
