Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the institution itself are sinking deeper into trouble by the day, which may explain the flurry of controversial moves.

Judges at the International Criminal Court confirmed the long-awaited arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders on 21 November. Six days later, Khan requested the first arrest warrants for Myanmar, which if approved would connect the country’s military ruler to the now 30 suspects wanted by the ICC, including Vladimir Putin.

A United Nations watchdog has been selected to head an external probe into allegations of sexual misconduct against the tribunal’s key official but the move will likely generate conflict of interest concerns owing to the prosecutor’s wife’s past work for the oversight body.

An investigation in October indicated that at the same time the ICC was readying a warrant for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Khan was facing internal accusations that he tried to coerce a female aide into a sexual relationship and groped her against her will over several months.

The Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute, which oversees the ICC, previously announced an external probe into the allegations but hadn’t said whom it would select to conduct the probe.

Khan’s wife, a prominent human rights attorney, worked at the agency in Kenya in 2019 and 2020 investigating sexual harassment.

The accusations against Khan surfaced when two court employees in whom the alleged victim confided came forward in May, a few weeks before Khan sought arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his then defense minister, and three Hamas leaders on war crimes charges over the Palestinian terrorist organization’s 7 October 2023 atrocities and the subsequent war in Gaza.

A three-judge panel last month signed off on those charges against the Israeli officials and one of the three Hamas leaders whose death the terror group has not yet confirmed.

Based on a report by news wire AP, although the 900-employee ICC has long had a “zero-tolerance” policy on sexual harassment, an outside review in 2020 found an unacceptable level of predatory behavior by male bosses, a lack of women in senior positions, and inadequate mechanisms for dealing with complaints and protecting whistleblowers.

“There is a general reluctance, if not extreme fear, among many staff to report any alleged act of misconduct or misbehavior” by a senior official, the experts concluded in their 348-page report. “The perception is that they are all immune.”

Although the ICC’s policies have been updated since the report, a 2024 internal report obtained by AP, which blew the lid off the allegations on Khan in lurid detail, showed that 30 percent of respondents to a staff survey reported they had experienced discrimination, abuse or harassment in the previous 12 months.

While the court’s watchdog could not determine wrongdoing, it nonetheless urged Khan in a memo to minimize contact with the woman to protect the rights of all involved and safeguard the court’s integrity.

The ICC retaliated, saying it was being threatened with draconian economic sanctions by institutions of another permanent member of the Security Council as if it was a terrorist organization, ICC President Judge Tomoko Akane said.

Speaking at an annual conference of the court’s 124 members, Akane did not name Russia or the United States but referred to them as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

The ICC is also “being threatened with draconian economic sanctions from institutions of another permanent member of the Security Council as if it was a terrorist organization. These measures would rapidly undermine the Court’s operations in all situations and cases and jeopardize its very existence,” she said.

The ICC remains under intense criticism despite the string of arrest orders on prominent personalities.

While very high-profile political leaders from different parts of the world are wanted, the only individuals who are tried remain mid-level African rebel commanders.

Geopolitical experts said that apart from the two verdicts, there will be only one ongoing trial and no prospect of any other case reaching the trial stage.

“The mandate of the office (of the prosecutor) is to conduct criminal trials. And to do that they need defendants,” Leila Sadat, the James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law at Washington University in St. Louis, who served as Special Adviser on Crimes Against Humanity to the ICC Prosecutor from 2012 to 2023, said.

“So I think that the prosecutor needs to roll out more indictments and more arrest warrants and focus on not necessarily the big fish, but cases that are winnable, cases where the jurisprudence will be important,” Sadat said.

The Philippines is included among the situations that do not show warrants of arrest publicly available, along with Burundi, Afghanistan and Venezuela.

(To be continued)