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This year's Nobel Peace Prize was meant to bolster international humanitarian law and went to a South African jurist who has worked on the International Criminal Court, among other places. But the Trump administration wants to dismantle that court and accuses it of trying to prosecute Americans. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports on new U.S. sanctions against the world's only standing war crimes tribunal.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls the ICC a rogue court and says the U.S. is now cutting off its resources and crippling its ability to operate.
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MARCO RUBIO: America never joined the court. We don't need that court, and we don't want it.
KELEMEN: In a video message, Rubio accused globalist experts - as he called them - of wanting the ICC to go after Americans.
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RUBIO: They want the International Criminal Court to do more, including the prosecution of American citizens and service members that are defending their country. They want to prosecute Border Patrol agents that are protecting our nation's borders, and they want to prosecute our elected leaders.
KELEMEN: But U.S. personnel are not the subject of any current investigation. The ICC suspended its look into the U.S. role in Afghanistan, even as it continues to prosecute crimes by the Taliban there. The Trump administration has criticized another big case - the arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Gaza. This year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, Navi Pillay, says international law and human rights are under threat. She spoke in Nuremberg, site of the first major international war crimes tribunal against the Nazis.
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NAVI PILLAY: These efforts that we are now seeing, which are attempts to weaken international criminal justice, endanger the progress painstakingly made since Nuremberg.
KELEMEN: The president of the International Criminal Court rejected the U.S. sanction, saying the court will not be deterred. The U.S. is giving companies six months to wind down their ties to the court. Indiana University professor David Bosco, who's written a book about the ICC, says this was meant to be a centralized place for war crimes victims to seek justice, instead of having courts for each and every conflict.
DAVID BOSCO: That was the - what happened during the 1990s, of course, was they set up, you know, a special court for the Balkans. They set up a special court for Rwanda. And I don't think it makes sense to anybody to do that rather than having a centralized court. The key question is - how broad is the jurisdiction of that court going to be?
KELEMEN: The court only has jurisdiction in member states, and that does not include the U.S. Secretary Rubio says he expects U.S. allies who rely on the U.S. military for their defense to, quote, "rein in" the court.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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