Original Coverage & Source Attribution: www.lawgazette.co.uk
The International Criminal Court is probably doomed if President Trump sanctions the entire institution, a former Danish prime minister told the IBA’s annual conference.
Helle Thorning-Schmidt fears that Trump will ‘go even harder’ on the ICC if his administration is weakened by November’s midterm elections, because the president has the power to act on his own.
Thorning-Schmidt served as prime minister of Denmark from 2011-15 as head of the social democratic party. At a session on the geopolitical challenges facing Europe, she was asked whether the ICC can survive. Trump is reported to be preparing sanctions against the entire court, adding to existing measures on individuals working there and stepping up his attack on the global tribunal that prosecutes war crimes and genocide.
‘I think they’ll actually go harder on [the ICC after the mid-terms] because attacking the court is something that can be done without Congress,’ said Thorning-Schmidt. ‘It can be done by the president on his own. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but it is very hard to survive… because if you’re sanctioned as an institution by the Americans, you can’t work with anyone.’
As Reuters has reported, among the court’s operations that could be affected by sanctions against the entire organisation are the purchasing of IT services and insurance, the hiring of investigators and conducting everyday financial transactions.
Last week the ICC cut ties with its health insurance provider Axa as it attempts to shield itself from the US assault. ‘This is just a start of what will happen if the whole organisation gets sanctioned,’ said Thorning-Schmidt. ‘I really hope they won’t. I hope that the American president will pause and I also hope that some other countries will try to defend the ICC. It has been part of creating an international system where there is actually access and a path to justice. We are living in a world of impunity and to break down the ICC would be part of that.’
Referring more generally to geopolitical developments, Thorning-Schmidt said: ‘There’s no doubt that the relationship between Europe and the United States has changed in a historic and profound way over the last year, and there’s no way of escaping that. And I’m not sure that it will ever come back to the way it was.’
The former PM stressed that Europeans can no longer rely solely on US security and must assume responsibility for their defence. ‘The only ones who are laughing when NATO is weaker…that would be Russia, North Korea and China, and perhaps Iran as well.’ She also advocated increasing the pressure on Russia, including potentially using frozen Russian state assets to aid Ukraine and ‘interrupt Russia’s corrupt war economy’.
Thorning-Schmidt, a former chief executive of Save the Children, is now co-chair of Meta’s oversight board, addressing the parameters of digital governance and free expression. Meta operates social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
‘We are independent of Meta in that they can’t tell us what to do. They can’t get rid of us,’ she stressed. ‘They have to follow our decisions. We wanted to add human rights standards to their community standards, and that’s what we’ve done.’
