Hague Group convenes 40 states at UN to defend international legal order

40 nations to weigh arms halts, port bans over occupation

On Monday, the UN General Assembly’s high-level meetings opened to news that Washington had drawn up sanctions against the International Criminal Court, targeting its bank accounts, software, insurers and staff, according to Varsha Gandikota, executive secretary of the Hague Group.

On Tuesday, the US president stood at the UN podium and threatened Iran with annihilation, Gandikota wrote. On Thursday at the same rostrum, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted by the ICC for war crimes, cast those seeking accountability as “barbarians who threaten our common civilization,” she said. Palestinian officials were denied travel visas by the United States and could not attend, the Hague Group said.

“The international legal order is in shambles,” Gandikota wrote. “But from the ruins of impunity and lawbreaking, a group of nations is working to enforce accountability.”

The US has drawn up sanctions against the ICC targeting the court’s bank accounts, software, insurers and staff, Gandikota reported. More than a dozen ICC judges and prosecutors, including the court’s president, already live under US sanctions, the Hague Group said. A designation of the entire institution would reach every European bank, insurer and technology supplier serving a court based in the Netherlands, according to the group. Gandikota warned that tools like these, once deployed, are never put back in the drawer, and asked how long before they are turned on European regulators, competition authorities and courts.

South Africa brought a Genocide Convention case against Israel’s actions in Gaza before the International Court of Justice, Gandikota wrote. After South Africa filed the case, it lost US aid, the Hague Group said. Netanyahu responded by declaring: “Nobody will stop us – not The Hague,” according to Gandikota. This summer, he mused on American television that, should his plane ever be forced down in a country that honours the ICC warrant, Israel’s special forces could be given “a new task,” she wrote. The US president has promised that Netanyahu will not be arrested on US soil “in any way, shape, or form,” the Hague Group reported.

States that resist impunity face sanctions, tariffs, threats and isolation, according to Gandikota. Colombia’s president had his visa revoked after speaking about Gaza in the streets of New York, the Hague Group said.

Every commander with a patron has learned that mass atrocity carries no price if their friends are strong enough, Gandikota wrote.

The Hague Group described a broader pattern of conflict across the region. Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed more than 4,000 people this year and displaced more than a million, according to Gandikota. The group described accelerating ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. In southern Syria, Israeli troops shell and raid villages in the countryside around Damascus, the organization said. In Sudan, massacres are carried out with arms, technology and financing from the United Arab Emirates, an ally of the Israeli government, according to the Hague Group.

The International Court of Justice found Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories unlawful and instructed every state not to aid or assist it, the Hague Group said. The UN General Assembly gave Israel 12 months to end the occupation; that deadline passed a year ago, according to Gandikota. The court has ordered provisional measures under the Genocide Convention, and the ICC has issued its warrants, she said.

Gandikota pointed to the anti-apartheid campaign as historical precedent. In 1962, the UN General Assembly created a special committee against apartheid in South Africa, she wrote. Newly independent states from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean pressed for arms embargoes, oil embargoes, sporting boycotts and divestment. In 1977, the Security Council imposed a mandatory arms embargo on Pretoria. Within two decades, the apartheid regime was gone, rendered unsustainable by the national liberation struggle at home and in exile and by states acting together to raise the cost of its crimes, Gandikota said.

“What we need is the courage to act,” Gandikota wrote. “States must use every tool at their disposal: halt arms and dual-use transfers, deny port access to military cargo, review public contracts and investments tied to the occupation – arrest the criminals and protect the legal officials.” She said that on Friday, ministers and representatives from 40 states gathering at UN headquarters for the Hague Group’s Extraordinary Meeting in Defence of International Law “will do just that.”

“The only response to unilateral bullying is collective action,” Gandikota wrote. “No single capital can absorb that pressure alone. Forty can.”