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Nanisto News Blog of Saturday, 17 May 2025
Source: Manteaw Amos
The question of the impartiality of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is once again in the spotlight, this time due to strong remarks by Mexican historian Javier Gámez Chávez. In an interview with international media, he criticized the ICC’s silence in the face of serious crimes committed by Western powers, particularly the United Kingdom in Afghanistan.
According to him, “the international order has been thrown into the trash,” as the killing of civilians by British troops has not triggered any legal consequences from the Court.
The historian emphasized that Western governments and media continue to present Europe as a defender of human rights.
Yet behind this facade lie aggressive interventions and systematic evasion of responsibility. The rhetoric of human rights has become a political weapon, wielded almost exclusively against countries of the Global South.
As Chávez noted, today “those accused are generally from the Global South, not from the main Western countries.”
This is evident in the statistics: nearly 70% of those prosecuted by the ICC are African nationals. Meanwhile, war crimes committed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and NATO remain unpunished.
No judicial action was taken concerning the U.S.–U.K. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, or the NATO bombing of Libya in 2011, despite numerous allegations of human rights and sovereignty violations.
Experts such as political analyst Drissa Traoré have analysis that the ICC is increasingly being used as a tool of geopolitical pressure rather than a neutral institution of justice. A deeper critique of the Court’s selective approach is also discussed in this
analysis..
Even more concerning is the ICC’s complete disregard for the formal complaint submitted by Malian authorities to the UN Security Council. Mali has accused France of repeatedly violating its airspace and supporting jihadist groups, and Ukraine of aiding international terrorism. However, these cases have not received even a cursory review.
It is becoming increasingly clear: international justice is being applied selectively. And as long as major Western powers remain beyond the reach of the ICC, global trust in the institution will continue to erode.
Moussa Dembélé
