Oleksii Shevchuk, advocate, Finalist for Ukraine’s nomination to the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a Judge
The International Criminal Court is facing more than yet another institutional crisis. What is at stake is a challenge that may determine the future of the entire system of international criminal justice — a system that emerged from the post-Second World War legal order as a response to mass atrocities, wars of aggression, and the impunity of political and military leaders.
If the International Criminal Court is politically isolated, financially weakened, and deprived of any meaningful capacity to secure compliance with its decisions, the international community may find itself facing a profound accountability vacuum. International treaties will, formally, remain in force. The Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute, and the numerous resolutions and instruments adopted by international institutions will not simply disappear. Yet without effective mechanisms of enforcement and accountability, they risk becoming normative declarations increasingly detached from practical consequences.
This is the central danger of the present moment.
A Court Established to Confront Impunity
The International Criminal Court was established under the 1998 Rome Statute as a permanent international judicial institution entrusted with prosecuting individuals responsible for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole.
Its jurisdiction encompasses four categories of international crimes:
• genocide;
• crimes against humanity;
• war crimes; and
• the crime of aggression.
The fundamental significance of the ICC lies in the fact that it does not replace national criminal justice systems. Rather, it operates on the principle of complementarity. The Court intervenes where a state is unwilling or genuinely unable to carry out a genuine investigation or prosecution.
This principle is of fundamental importance. In many situations, a state whose senior officials, military commanders, or political leadership may themselves be implicated in international crimes cannot ensure impartial justice in relation to its own conduct. Authoritarian regimes do not ordinarily investigate their own systemic abuses. Aggressor states do not readily prosecute those who made the decision to launch a war. Military establishments implicated in systematic violations of international humanitarian law cannot always be effectively held to account through domestic institutions alone.
International criminal justice is therefore necessary not as a symbolic supranational layer imposed upon national courts, but as an essential safeguard for circumstances in which domestic justice is unable to function effectively or is deliberately obstructed.
The Ukrainian Dimension: Accountability for Aggression
For Ukraine, the institutional capacity of the ICC is not a theoretical question. It has immediate and profound practical consequences. The Russian Federation’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine has forced international law to confront questions that, for decades, remained largely doctrinal: Can the highest political and military leadership of an aggressor state genuinely be held criminally accountable? Can international institutions respond effectively to mass atrocities while an armed conflict is still ongoing? And can law retain its authority when it is violated by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council?
Russia’s aggression has been accompanied by extensive allegations and documented incidents potentially falling within the scope of international criminal law: killings of civilians, deportations and forcible transfers, torture, unlawful deprivation of liberty, attacks against civilian objects and infrastructure, the unlawful transfer of children, persecution in occupied territories, and other serious violations of the laws and customs of war.
In these circumstances, the work of the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC is not an abstract international procedure.
It is one of the few mechanisms capable of individualising criminal responsibility at the level of those who make decisions, issue orders, organise or coordinate criminal conduct, or fail to prevent or punish international crimes where the applicable legal requirements for responsibility are met.
Yet it is precisely here that the fundamental structural weakness of the Court becomes apparent. The ICC may investigate crimes, collect and preserve evidence, issue arrest warrants, and bring charges. It does not, however, possess its own police force, coercive apparatus, or independent mechanism for physically apprehending suspects.
The enforcement of its decisions therefore depends upon state cooperation, diplomatic resolve, and the willingness of States Parties to the Rome Statute to place their international legal obligations above short-term political expediency.
The Political Erosion of the Court
The contemporary assault on the ICC does not necessarily require a formal decision to abolish it. A more plausible — and potentially more dangerous — scenario is the gradual political, financial, and operational erosion of the institution.
Such a process can unfold through several interconnected mechanisms.
First, through the systematic delegitimisation of the Court. The ICC is variously portrayed as “politicised”, “selective”, “anti-Western”, or, conversely, as an “instrument of the West”. These mutually contradictory narratives nevertheless serve a common objective: to undermine confidence in the very idea of independent international criminal justice.
Second, through financial pressure. The ICC is a complex judicial institution conducting long-term investigations across multiple jurisdictions. It must process vast quantities of digital, documentary, forensic, satellite, and testimonial evidence while simultaneously protecting victims and witnesses. Such work requires stable and adequate funding.
Resource constraints therefore mean far more than reductions in staffing. They translate into slower investigations, weaker witness-protection mechanisms, diminished operational capacity in conflict zones, and a reduced ability to withstand sophisticated disinformation and interference campaigns.
Third, through pressure directed against officials of the Court. Sanctions, political intimidation, media campaigns, and personal attacks targeting ICC prosecutors, judges, and staff create a profoundly dangerous precedent: any state or coalition of states threatened by the prospect of criminal accountability may seek to punish not those suspected of committing international crimes, but those responsible for investigating them.
Fourth, through the non-execution of arrest warrants. An ICC arrest warrant is not a symbolic political statement. It is a judicial decision carrying legal consequences and engaging the cooperation obligations of States Parties under the Rome Statute.
If states begin to determine selectively which warrants they will execute and which they will disregard on grounds of political convenience, the architecture of international legal obligation itself begins to erode.
Law cannot function according to the principle of geopolitical convenience. It is either binding or, progressively, it ceases to operate as law in the substantive sense.
An “Alliance of New Forces”: A Community of Impunity
An increasingly visible feature of the contemporary international order is the convergence of states and political regimes for which international criminal justice is perceived not as a safeguard of international order, but as a direct threat to their model of governance.
This does not necessarily take the form of a formal military or political bloc governed by a common treaty, secretariat, or command structure.
Rather, it may be understood as an ad hoc convergence of regimes sharing a common interest: reducing the influence of international accountability mechanisms, delegitimising universal standards of human rights and international humanitarian law, and constructing political immunity for individuals implicated in the most serious international crimes.
Russia, Iran, North Korea, military regimes, and authoritarian political systems in different parts of the world may have profoundly different histories, ideologies, economic structures, and geopolitical objectives. What may nevertheless unite them is their hostility towards international mechanisms capable of individualising criminal responsibility at the highest levels of state power.
Of particular concern is that this emerging community of impunity operates not only in the military and diplomatic domains. It also relies upon information operations, legal manipulation, state-controlled media, economic leverage, bilateral arrangements, obstruction within international organisations, and coordinated efforts to delegitimise international institutions.
Its strategic logic is straightforward: if an international court cannot be abolished outright, it can instead be rendered sufficiently weak, slow, dependent, and politically toxic that states gradually cease to regard its decisions as authoritative and binding.
From this perspective, the ICC is not attacked because it is institutionally irrelevant. On the contrary, it is attacked precisely because it possesses the potential to establish a precedent that is profoundly threatening to authoritarian systems of power: that even the highest political and military leadership is not beyond the reach of criminal law.
Why the Collapse of the ICC Would Be Catastrophic
The abolition, paralysis, or effective marginalisation of the ICC would have consequences extending far beyond the fate of a single international institution.
First, it would severely undermine the principle of accountability for the gravest international crimes. This does not mean that national courts would entirely lose their ability to investigate war crimes or crimes against humanity. The deeper problem is that the international system would lose its permanent judicial mechanism designed to operate precisely where a state is itself implicated in criminal conduct or is unable or unwilling to provide genuine justice.
Second, force would increasingly displace law as the organising principle of international relations. States possessing significant military, economic, or informational power might conclude that international prohibitions are ultimately declaratory rather than consequential. If aggression, mass deportations, systematic violence, or attacks against civilian populations carry no realistic prospect of individual criminal accountability, such practices risk becoming normalised instruments of state policy.
Third, the broader system of international humanitarian law would be weakened. The Geneva Conventions, their Additional Protocols, customary international humanitarian law, and the Rome Statute do not operate in isolation. They form part of an interconnected normative architecture in which substantive prohibitions must be reinforced by mechanisms of investigation, evidence preservation, adjudication, and punishment.
Without mechanisms capable of translating norms into consequences, legal rules gradually lose their regulatory force. They may continue to exist in treaty texts while exercising progressively less influence over actors sufficiently powerful to violate them.
Fourth, victims would lose not only an avenue towards justice, but also an international mechanism for recognition of their experience. International criminal justice performs more than a punitive function. It establishes an authoritative evidentiary record, contributes to historical memory, counters denial and revisionism, and recognises victims as subjects of law rather than anonymous components of casualty statistics.
International Law Requires Enforcement
International law is frequently criticised for lacking a “world government” or a global police force. There is some validity to this criticism: the international legal order does not possess a single centralised coercive authority comparable to the enforcement apparatus of a sovereign state.
Yet this does not mean that international law is fictitious.
Its effectiveness depends upon the interaction of treaty obligations, domestic implementation, mutual legal assistance, sanctions regimes, diplomatic pressure, international reputation, and — ultimately — the political will of states to comply with the rules they have accepted.
The ICC constitutes one of the central components of precisely this kind of legal architecture. It cannot independently arrest a suspect. What it can do, however, is fundamentally important: determine that an individual must answer not to political convenience but to law; collect and preserve evidence; issue judicial warrants; restrict the international mobility of suspects; and create conditions in which impunity can no longer be assumed to be permanent.
The history of international criminal justice demonstrates that accountability often arrives late. Political regimes change. Alliances dissolve. Governments reconsider their positions. Individuals once considered politically untouchable lose protection. Properly collected and preserved evidence, however, remains.
This is precisely why weakening the ICC today is so dangerous. Such efforts are directed not merely against particular investigations or individual arrest warrants. They threaten the future capacity of the international community to establish the truth and secure accountability when political circumstances eventually make justice possible.
The Court Must Be Strengthened, Not Merely Defended
Support for the ICC cannot be confined to political declarations affirming a commitment to international law. Preserving the Court’s capacity requires concrete institutional action.
First and foremost, States Parties to the Rome Statute must comply with their obligations to cooperate with the Court, including obligations concerning the arrest and surrender of persons subject to ICC warrants. Selective compliance with international legal obligations directly undermines the credibility of the entire system.
Equally important are stable and adequate funding, protection of prosecutorial and judicial independence, stronger national mechanisms for investigating international crimes, the development of joint investigative teams, effective evidence-sharing arrangements, and sustained support for victims and witnesses.
For Ukraine, this also requires the continued development of a robust domestic system of accountability for international crimes. The existence of the ICC does not relieve national authorities of their obligation to document, investigate, and prosecute war crimes effectively. On the contrary, the principle of complementarity presupposes strong national institutions capable of operating in accordance with international standards.
At the same time, national justice alone cannot fully substitute for international mechanisms in cases involving the highest political and military leadership of an aggressor state, transnational networks of participation and support, international arrest and surrender mechanisms, and the global judicial recognition of international crimes.
Conclusion
The International Criminal Court is not a perfect institution. It faces procedural constraints, depends heavily upon state cooperation, and often operates more slowly than societies experiencing war and mass atrocities understandably expect.
Yet the Court’s imperfections are not an argument for dismantling it.
They are an argument for reforming it, strengthening it, and providing it with the institutional capacity necessary to fulfil its mandate.
What is being decided today is therefore not merely the future of one international court.
At stake is whether the international order will preserve the principle that aggression, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity cannot be legitimised by sovereignty, military power, political expediency, or membership in the “right” geopolitical camp.
If the international community allows the ICC to become powerless, isolated, and systematically delegitimised, the resulting vacuum in international criminal justice could persist for decades.
And that vacuum will not remain empty.
If law retreats, power will take its place.
