“The entire world watches a daily live broadcast of massacres, displacement, starvation and brutality. The occupier openly violates international law. At the same time, governments and institutions claiming to champion human rights, shield Israel, distort our image, demonize our voices and even supply the occupation with weapons that support our genocide.” — Madlin Hamed, Palestinian journalist based in Gaza
Today, on the Day of International Criminal Justice, we will witness a familiar contradiction: states will tweet about their commitment to fighting impunity for international crimes while they continue to profit from or tolerate the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
By continuing to send weapons to Israel and refusing to impose consequences for the continuing commission of international crimes, states embolden all perpetrators. As a gender expert with a focus on crimes of sexual and gender-based violence, I am deeply familiar with the challenges to accountability. But as an international lawyer dedicated to criminal justice, I have never been more disillusioned with state selectivity on complying with international law. The overnight exception to this is the commitment by 12 countries in the Hague Group to take collective action to prevent genocide.
Progress toward accountability for international crimes has been slow and inconsistent. After the WWII tribunals and the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, international criminal trials were piecemeal and sporadic for decades. The ad-hoc tribunals of the 1990s and the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 heralded more systemic gains. In the last decade, international justice mechanisms have been complemented by a gradual increase in national trials for international crimes, under the ICC’s complementarity principle, universal jurisdiction and domestic laws. We have seen country leaders charged and arrested for international crimes, and national courts try genocide cases.
As an international lawyer, dedicated to criminal justice, I have never been more disillusioned with state selectivity on complying with international law. The overnight exception to this is the commitment by 12 countries in the Hague Group to take collective action to prevent genocide.
For a moment, it seemed that Martin Luther King might have been right when he said the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But today, it seems justice may be beyond reach. For over 18 months, we have seen every standard defied, week after week, as governments continue shielding Israel and its leaders from accountability for its international crimes.
Ever more frequently, the question “How is this happening?” is asked by increasingly distressed, disturbed, and despairing individuals and communities around the world. We thought we had evolved, but it’s never been clearer that international criminal justice was a noble project permitted to operate, but only at the fringes of power.
We cannot understand this failure of international criminal justice without naming the intersecting systems of oppression that enable genocide. Unchecked militarism, exemplified by the continuing arms trade with Israel; settler colonialism, which normalises Palestinian dispossession; nationalism and racial supremacy, which dehumanizes them; patriarchal violence, which deepens gendered suffering; and extractive capitalism, which profits from war and occupation—all form a legal and political shield against accountability, despite overwhelming evidence of atrocity crimes, including genocide.
By shielding Israel from all consequences, world leaders are not just complicit in the genocide, they are destroying the very foundation of international criminal justice.
Even the most damning convergence of international expert conclusions – from the International Court of Justice, to the ICC, to UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, to the UN Commission of Inquiry, to the countless independently investigated evidence-based reports and universal jurisdiction efforts by the Global 195 coalition and various States – has failed to slow the genocidal trajectory.
International criminal justice is a promise that criminal accountability will prevent international crimes – including genocide - in the future. Yet, as the genocide unfolds in real time in Palestine, this promise feels nearly impossible.
“I headed to the hospital expecting to find my daughter in a bed so I could bring her home. Her name is Ghena, she’s seven years old. Then I saw the shroud: it said ‘Ghena Al-Jazar.’ I looked at her face, still so beautiful, but the wound was in her head; the entire back of her skull was gone ... The shock was overwhelming; my mind couldn’t grasp it for a long time, maybe it still can’t.” — Alaa – 29-year-old mother and widow from Rafah
That promise of justice relies on us dismantling the structures and systems that give rise to these crimes in the first place. Until we start to challenge these intersecting systems and spheres of unchecked power, international criminal justice will continue to unravel. And our shared humanity with it.
By shielding Israel from all consequences, world leaders are not just complicit in the genocide, they are destroying the very foundation of international criminal justice. What States must do to avoid this and fulfill their legal obligations is clear: execute ICC arrest warrants; ensure compliance with ICJ judgments on Palestine; sanction and suspend arms transfers to Israel; suspend Israel from the UN General Assembly; and support all efforts to investigate and punish international crimes in Palestine.
What States must do to avoid this and fulfill their legal obligations is clear: execute ICC arrest warrants; ensure compliance with ICJ judgments on Palestine; sanction and suspend arms transfers to Israel; suspend Israel from the UN General Assembly; and support all efforts to investigate and punish international crimes in Palestine.
To honor this day and connect lofty principles of justice to lived reality, I urge you to pause and listen to those who bear the weight of our collective inaction. Spend a few minutes with Nakba testimonies, where Palestinians recount 77 years of dispossession and their experience with the ongoing genocide; then tune in to “Voices from Gaza: Unravelling the Genocide.” Palestinian voices remind us that resuscitating international criminal justice is not a technical exercise but a moral imperative.
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