Sexual harassment allegations against its chief prosecutor have snowballed into the most serious crisis ever faced by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The crisis has been exacerbated in recent weeks by three different inquiries reaching three different conclusions.
With no final verdict delivered, the allegations are ravaging a court already coping with US sanctions, and with European Union (EU) leaders seemingly turning their backs on an institution they did so much to create.
The implications for the court’s work in Ukraine and elsewhere are very obviously negative since the Khan affair has cast serious doubt on its credibility. It has issued war crimes arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin, his defense minister, armed forces chief of staff, two senior commanders, and a government official.
The allegations that the chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, sexually abused a staff member over a 12-month period first surfaced in media reports in 2024.
The court asked the United Nations to investigate. At the time, it was seen as a smart move because the ICC is not part of the UN, so the impartiality of the UN’s internal affairs unit would not be questioned.
Khan, a UK barrister, has denied the allegations in their entirety. He voluntarily stepped down from his work in May until the investigations are finished.
The UN team wrote in December that there was evidence Khan had “nonconsensual sexual contact with [the aide] in his office, at his private residence, and whilst on mission,” according to a copy of their report leaked to Associated Press.
But the UN said they could not produce a verdict, simply handing the court 5,000 pages of evidence, including new allegations made against Khan by a second woman.
The ICC then established a panel of judges to sift this evidence. But without the power to cross-examine, the judges declared last month there was not enough evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and so pronounced Khan innocent.
A week later, the body that supervises the court, the Bureau, came to a third conclusion, ruling that disciplinary proceedings must commence against the prosecutor. This is not a finding of guilt, simply a decision to start the investigation process over again.
All three processes have been carried out in secret, with the results of all three leaked to the media. For critics, it resembles a game of pass-the-parcel, each investigation shifting the problem to the next.
The Association of International Criminal Law Prosecutors has issued a scathing report about this process, saying it helps neither Khan nor his alleged victims. “The facts were never fully determined, and the law was never fully applied,” it concluded.
All of which would be extremely damaging at the best of times. But it comes with the court facing multiple battles on other fronts. Last year, Trump sanctioned key ICC personnel, accusing them of abusing power for investigations of US personnel and Israeli leaders. US banks and tech companies cut ties with the court.
If there was ever a time for the EU to show support for a court it was instrumental in creating, it was then. Yet there were no heads of state or government from the major European powers at the ICC’s annual meeting in December.
Instead, many, including France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, declared they would not arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, indicted by the ICC over the Gaza war. Hungary has also quit the court, as have a growing number of African nations.
In the Hague, staff morale is plummeting. An internal survey revealed only a third of the court’s 900 officials think it has an “open and honest culture.” Three-quarters of prosecution staff say they would not report harassment, fearing retaliation by bosses.
Harassment has been a persistent problem at the ICC. A report by South African jurist Richard Goldstone five years ago found bullying and sexual harassment against female staff rampant, and described a “climate of fear”. The ICC promised to clean up its act, but bullying allegations nearly doubled last year, according to internal investigators.
Most damning of all has been the court’s failure to make a dent in wars it is supposed to police. In 23 years of operations, it has jailed just nine war criminals, despite investigating 17 conflicts.
This is not all the fault of the court. The convoluted Khan investigation was partly because his first alleged victim refused to testify to the ICC’s internal investigators, saying she feared they were too close to senior officials.
Yet the case, and the secrecy surrounding it, has left ICC credibility in tatters. It will be many months before the new investigation is finished, and no guarantee of a verdict at the end of it.
In the meantime, some critics wonder how a court can be trusted with war crimes cases if it can’t properly investigate itself.
Chris Stephen is a former war correspondent with The Guardian. He has written on war crimes justice matters for publications including The Hill, International Institute for Strategic Studies, and Counsel, the magazine of the bar association of England and Wales. He is the author of The Future of War Crimes Justice, (Melville House, London and New York) and Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic (Atlantic Books, London and New York).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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