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As Navi Pillay wins Nobel Peace Prize, US takes unprecedented action to cripple the court she served on.
When South African jurist Navi Pillay won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, she happened to be at a conference at the Nuremberg Court in Germany, where the landmark trial of Nazi leaders almost 80 years ago laid the foundations for modern international law.
As her colleagues in the human rights community applauded and congratulated the former International Criminal Court (ICC) judge on her win, her first reaction was simply: “Is it true? I thought it must be a joke.”
“If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with (US President Donald) Trump,” she quipped, a reference to how last year’s winner gave her medal to the US president, before adding “it’s very appropriate that I’m with friends, colleagues, all of whom support human rights.”
Hours after Pillay’s win, the Trump administration announced fresh sanctions on the ICC, the body established in 2002 to prosecute individuals accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
The work of the human rights community and the international legal order have increasingly come under attack in recent years – a fact the Nobel committee was eager to highlight in its decision to recognize Pillay, 85.
By spotlighting Pillay, who has served on several international courts and oversaw a 2025 UN report that concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, the committee said it wanted to “remind the world that the rule of law – national and international – underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace.”
Justice is a ‘necessity’ for peace
That message was not explicitly directed at any one state. But implicitly, it rebuked those countries – most notably the US – whose actions have weakened international legal institutions.
As part of its efforts to “dismantle” the ICC “brick by brick,” in the words of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Trump administration on Friday announced sanctions on the ICC itself.
“We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate,” Rubio said in a statement hours after the Nobel Peace Prize was announced.
The measure would cut off the court from US companies and financial services. The US Treasury has issued a six-month waiver for companies to wind down their operations with the court. The State Department said that the six-month window “is intended to provide time” for the court “to demonstrate meaningful progress on diplomatic and legal resolutions that address fundamental US concerns regarding the ICC,” and that it “can be adjusted in response to the success or failure of such efforts to address our concerns.”
The sweeping action faced immediate rebuke from the court and other nations.
The ICC condemned the move as an “assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order,” called on other states to support the court and emphasized that its work would continue.
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom reaffirmed their “continued and unwavering support” for the court.
“As committed supporters of the ICC we regret and strongly disagree with the announcement of sanctions to be imposed upon the court by the United States,” the statement read.
Several of the court’s prosecutors have already been targeted by US sanctions after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant in 2024.
Rubio vowed in July to “dismantle” the ICC, accusing it of “waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles,” but with “the force of so-called international law.” Neither the US nor Israel are parties to the court, and Washington has challenged its jurisdiction to investigate either country.
The administration’s ire against the ICC goes back to Trump’s first term, when it targeted the court for seeking to investigate alleged war crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan. The second Trump administration has imposed a slew of sanctions against ICC officials for their attempts to investigate the US and Israel.
The Trump administration has targeted the ICC with sanctions.
The Trump administration has targeted the ICC with sanctions. Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto/Getty Images
Without referencing these efforts, the Nobel committee warned that international law is “an absolute necessity” for peace, even if it has struggled to hold the world’s most powerful actors responsible for their actions.
“History has shown that a world operating without the rule of law is unjust, unwise and inhumane,” the committee continued. “The judges – those who guard the thin red line between order and chaos – are therefore highly deserving of our praise. But today, as these same judges are sanctioned, and their institutions are attacked.”
As always, my deep gratitude to all
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