PREVIEW
Washington’s sanctions threaten the ICC’s essential services as the Nobel Committee boosts the international law camp
Navi Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize sharpens the focus on international justice as United States President Donald Trump’s administration moves to restrict the financial and technological infrastructure supporting the International Criminal Court.
The South African former judge and UN human rights chief was honoured on 9 October for promoting peace and international law. Washington announced institution-wide sanctions hours later. They will include all US dollar payments and accounts, held by staffers, cloud services and insurance policies. The measures include a six-month wind-down period for US business dealings with the ICC. The sanctions are intended to ‘defend US sovereignty’, said US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
They had been planned before the Nobel Peace Prize award, but the synchronicity of the announcement underscored a widening divide between the committee’s defence of legal accountability and US efforts to constrain the court. Member states of the European Union say they will defend the Court against US sanctions.
The Nobel Prize award crowns a brilliant and distinguished career. Pillay was a leading defender of anti-apartheid activists before being appointed as the first black female judge of the High Court of South Africa in 1995.
Her international career began as President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda before a five-year stint as a judge on the International Criminal Court from 2003-2008 (AC Vol 51 No 20, Massaging the message). She was then appointed UN Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008-2014 (AC Vol 55 No 9, Calling time on the killing).
Pillay is the fifth South African to win the Nobel Peace Prize, whose committee said the award was ‘for her efforts to promote peace and international law’.
Having spent nearly two decades in senior UN positions, Pillay’s award is a symbolic vote of confidence in multilateralism and the international law – pitting the Nobel Prize committee against the Trump administration.
Piqued by being denied the prize to which he believes he is entitled, Donald Trump described Pillay’s award as ‘disgraceful’ and that ‘the Nobel committee had shamed itself beyond repair and demeaned the once great Nobel Peace Prize’.
Pillay joked with colleagues that ‘if you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump’; a reference to the US President’s demand that the Nobel Committee award him the Peace Prize. The award could also intensify the US-South Africa diplomatic froideur. South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa celebrated Pillay’s ‘progressive contribution… to bring hope to peoples globally.’
Before the latest round of US sanctions against the 17 ICC justices, Pillay had called the measures, ‘unheard of, unacceptable.’
She was quickly joined by a group of countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands, who stated that they ‘regret and strongly disagree with’ the sanctions.
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