On 9 October 2026, the US designated the International Criminal Court under Executive Order 14203, extending its existing sanctions package on individual ICC officials to the entity itself as a whole.
The US imposed asset freezes on any property owned by the Court and prohibited all transactions by US individuals or entities involving the ICC.
The US has allowed certain limited exceptions to this general prohibition, to allow for the ongoing detention of some awaiting trial, the payment of pensions, the use of IT software and social media and a 180-day ‘wind down’, allowing certain otherwise prohibited transactions until April 2027.
These sanctions were introduced by the US in what Secretary of State Marco Rubio called an ongoing campaign to ‘dismantle the ICC brick by brick’.
‘For decades, Republicans and Democrats alike rejected the idea that the International Criminal Court had the power to prosecute American citizens, military service members, or political leaders. America never joined the court. We don’t need it. And we don’t want it,’ Rubio said in a statement.
‘We expect our allies, many of whom are part of the ICC and that rely on American service members for their defense, to rein in the court. If they do not, the United States will continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC, brick by brick, until Americans are threatened no longer,’ he added.
The ICC called the sanctions ‘an attempt to obstruct the course of justice and to prevent the Court from doing what it was created to do. It is an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order which strikes at the simple principle that no one stands above the law.’
Those countries that have signed up to the ICC – the ‘State Parties’ – now have to decide how to respond, through diplomacy; support or the ‘nuclear option’.
by Chatham House – Responding to US sanctions on the International Criminal Court
