The court that prosecutes people who rape children in wartime is what you said you would dismantle.
The court that prosecutes people who murder civilians is what you called a threat to your country.
The court that prosecutes genocide is what you said you would “systematically disable.”
Your country is not a party to the court. Your country’s soil is not subject to its jurisdiction. The court cannot reach a single American citizen on American land. You knew this when you spoke. You said it anyway. You called it principle.
On Monday, Marco Rubio, the United States secretary of state, vowed to dismantle the International Criminal Court. On Wednesday, Representative Ilhan Omar introduced a resolution urging the United States to join it — the first congressional pushback against an administration that has spent months building the case to destroy the tribunal.
The ICC was created by the Rome Statute, which entered into force on 1 July 2002. One hundred and twenty-five countries have joined. The United States has not. The court cannot prosecute crimes on American soil. It can prosecute crimes committed on the soil of member states.
Rubio claimed the ICC threatens “every aspect of [America’s] political and legal system.” He mischaracterized the court’s jurisdiction and intentions. The European Union rejected the administration’s assertion. Two advocacy groups have sued the administration, arguing that Trump’s executive order forced them to halt constitutionally protected work with the ICC’s investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza.
The court briefly enjoyed bipartisan American support after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when the late Senator Lindsey Graham called it “a venue to bring bad actors to justice in those areas where the Rule of Law is absent.”
Marco, the court is for the people your country’s enemies do not protect. The Yazidi women of Sinjar whose daughters were sold in the market. The Rohingya whose villages were burned around them. The civilians of Bucha, outside Kyiv, who were shot in the street and left to rot. The families of Gaza whose children were pulled from the rubble of buildings the court was investigating whether your country’s ally had bombed unlawfully.
These are the people the court exists for. These are the people you have said you will “systematically disable” the court for.
The court cannot reach you. It cannot reach your family. It cannot reach any citizen of your country. The only people it can reach are the people who commit the kinds of crimes your country says it opposes. The court is the mechanism by which the international community says: this is too far. This is outside the boundary of what humans may do to other humans. If you do this, you will be held accountable.
You have said you will break that mechanism. You have called it a threat. The threat is not to your country. The threat is to the impunity of the people who rape children in war and murder civilians and burn villages. The threat is to the people who do what your country’s enemies do. You have promised to protect them.
Your throat does not close when you say the words. Your hand does not pause when you sign the order. There is no tightening behind your sternum when you hear the word “genocide.” Your stomach does not turn. You will sleep tonight, Marco. You have always slept. The mechanism is abstract to you. The bodies it exists to protect are in other countries, other languages, other griefs that you will never see. The Yazidi mother whose daughter was sold in the market will not appear in your briefing room. The man who survived the mass grave in Srebrenica will not testify before your committee. The woman whose family was killed in the Rohingya genocide will not stand in your office and ask you why you took away the only court that could have named what was done to her.
You will not hear them. You have arranged your work so that you will not hear them.
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Matthew 25:40
Marco, you have not committed the crime. You have not pulled the trigger. You have not set the fire. You have not raped the child. You have done something else. You have dismantled the room where the survivors could have stood and said: this is what was done to me. You have broken the one mechanism that might have held the door open for them.
The door is closing. The room is coming down. This is the door, Marco. You are closing it. You are the one who promised the war criminals you would close it.