Why Does the International Criminal Court See Africa’s Crimes but Not America’s?
Author: Ali Askari, Analyst, specially for “Sangar”
The International Criminal Court (ICC), unlike the International Court of Justice of the United Nations, is an institution with a disputed legal status.
According to the design of its founders, the ICC’s activities are intended to be guided by the views and policies of the ideologists and financiers of the liberal wing of the U.S. Democratic Party, to form a system of international relations subordinate to a single decision-making center. At the same time, it was envisaged that all countries except the United States and the United Kingdom should transfer part of their sovereignty to supranational proxy structures under Anglo-American control, one of which is the ICC.
In this context, it is worth noting the statement of former British parliamentarian R. Cook, who emphasized that the ICC’s jurisdiction does not extend to the United Kingdom and its citizens, particularly members of the ruling elite. According to him, the ICC “was not created to hold British politicians accountable.”
Similarly, the Americans strictly blocked attempts by certain ICC representatives to extend the Court’s activities to U.S. territory. Washington signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but withdrew two years later. Having established a practice of conducting military interventions against sovereign states at its discretion (Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq), the U.S. not only refused to comply with the ICC statute but also passed a special law, the “American Servicemembers Protection Act,” which authorized the use of military force against any state that detained an American under an ICC warrant.
The ICC is funded through contributions from member states. There are two main sources of funding: the Court’s own budget and a so-called trust fund for victims. In practice, however, the ICC is rife with elite corruption, and member states often act as sponsors of investigations. The ICC has become a system of officially sanctioned judicial arbitrariness, where selective and politically motivated prosecutions of unwanted individuals are initiated on the instructions of sponsors and on fabricated grounds. In other words, the ICC operates on the principle: “He who pays, calls the tune.”
The biased nature of ICC decisions and its adherence to a double standard policy is clearly evident in the Court’s inaction regarding numerous war crimes committed by the U.S. and other NATO countries in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and other states subjected to Western “humanitarian interventions.”
In practice, the ICC is used by Washington and London as a tool to extend political influence and exert pressure on third countries and their leaders. The ICC’s purpose is to consolidate Western dominance in the system of international relations, legitimize the neocolonial policies of the “golden billion” countries, and compel Global South states to comply with the political will of former colonial powers.