In its annual report published last Tuesday, Amnesty International denounces what it says are attacks by the United States and Russia against international mechanisms that guarantee accountability.

The organization also criticizes the inaction of the European Union and many states in the face of these obstacles.

 

US sanctions and Russian arrest warrants: a deliberate obstruction

 

The report accuses the United States of imposing sanctions on prosecutors and judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC), as well as on the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories and several Palestinian human rights organizations. According to Amnesty International, this strategy was openly aimed at "obstructing the work of the ICC and shielding Israeli and US citizens from accountability."

 

Meanwhile, the organization denounces Russia's behavior, whose courts have issued arrest warrants for ICC officials. Faced with these actions, Amnesty International regrets that "other countries have largely done nothing to protect these individuals and organizations, as well as the ICC itself." The European Union is specifically singled out: it "chose not to activate its blocking statute," a legal instrument that would have allowed it to counter the extraterritorial application of US sanctions.

 

A growing distrust of the Rome Statute

 

The report also denounces the announcements of withdrawal from the Rome Statute by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, all three members of the ICC, as well as the official notification of withdrawal filed by Hungary in 2026. Amnesty also criticizes the non-cooperation of several ICC member states including Hungary, Italy and Tajikistan which have not implemented arrest warrants issued by the Court.

The organization nevertheless welcomes the continued work of international mechanisms. The ICC has issued arrest warrants for two Taliban leaders for the crime against humanity of gender-based persecution in Afghanistan. It has also unsealed warrants for the arrest of Libyan citizens accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The former President of the Philippines was handed over to the ICC for the crime of murder in connection with the "war on drugs." In December, a pre-trial chamber confirmed 39 charges against Joseph Kony, founder of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. Germany handed over to the ICC a senior Libyan militia official suspected of violence at Mitiga prison in Tripoli. The ICC found the leader of the Janjaweed militias guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, Sudan. In the Central African Republic, the Special Criminal Court sentenced six former members of an armed group for the killing of dozens of people in 2020.

 

New mechanisms: tribunal on Ukraine and investigation into Afghanistan

 

Amnesty also notes the creation of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine by the Council of Europe, as well as the establishment by the UN of an independent investigative mechanism for Afghanistan.

The organization calls on states to support and protect the ICC, including by activating blocking laws, and to enforce arrest warrants without state officials being able to invoke judicial immunity.