Impunity today: an uncomfortable assessment on International Criminal Justice Day
Every 17 July, the world recalls that in 1998 the international community decided, for the first time on a permanent and institutional basis, that the most serious crimes against humanity would not be consigned to oblivion nor would they depend solely on the political will of states. The adoption of the Rome Statute led to the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the first permanent criminal court with jurisdiction to try genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and, since 2018, the crime of aggression.
Almost three decades later, that commitment remains legally valid. Yet the state of impunity continues to be a cause for deep concern.
There is a convenient tendency to speak of the fight against impunity in the past tense, as if it were a story of gradual and irreversible progress. The Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the creation of the International Criminal Court and the development of a wealth of international case law seem to confirm that the arc of justice always moves forward. However, history demonstrates exactly the opposite: international criminal justice has never progressed in a linear fashion. It is the result of a constant tension between the desire to hold people to account and the ability of those wielding political, military or economic power to prevent that justice from reaching them.
The tribunals established by the United Nations during the 1990s demonstrated that it was possible to bring to justice even those who seemed untouchable. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia prosecuted military and political leaders responsible for the atrocities committed during the Balkan wars. The convictions of Radovan Karadžić — 40 years’ imprisonment — and Ratko Mladić — life imprisonment, upheld on appeal in 2021 — for the Srebrenica genocide set a historic precedent. Although Slobodan Milošević died before his trial concluded, the very fact that the then President of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was brought to trial represented a break with decades of political immunity.
At the same time, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda secured the first international conviction for genocide against a former head of government and established decisive precedents regarding sexual violence as a constituent element of genocide. Those decisions forever changed international criminal law and expanded legal protection for victims.
The International Criminal Court, which has been operational since 2002 and is currently supported by 125 States Parties, has consolidated much of that legacy. To date, it has handed down convictions for the recruitment of child soldiers, the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war, the forced displacement of civilians, deliberate attacks against civilians and the intentional destruction of the world’s cultural heritage. Furthermore, it is conducting ongoing investigations into more than a dozen situations, including Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan, Myanmar/Bangladesh, Venezuela, the Philippines and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Each investigation represents an opportunity – often the only one – for victims to obtain some form of judicial recognition when national systems have failed.
The issuance of arrest warrants against sitting heads of state, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has demonstrated that the Court is prepared to exercise its mandate even against some of the most powerful international figures. Precisely for this reason, political resistance against the institution has also grown.
The ICC, however, is not the only mechanism for combating impunity.
Universal jurisdiction is a powerful tool. For years, Spain was a global leader in the application of this principle. Cases such as that of Augusto Pinochet – whose arrest in London in 1998 marked a turning point in the fight against impunity – placed the Spanish judiciary at the forefront of international criminal justice. However, the legislative reforms set out in Organic Law 1/2009 and, in particular, in Organic Law 1/2014, significantly restricted the scope of universal jurisdiction under pressure from political and diplomatic considerations, leading to a prolonged period of limited use.
Since 2019, however, there has been a renewed development of this principle, driven by a greater commitment on the part of various states to the prosecution of international crimes. Germany has led this resurgence through proceedings against former Syrian officials for crimes against humanity, as demonstrated by the Higher Regional Court of Koblenz: the landmark Al Khatib trial (2020–2022) against former intelligence officers Anwar Raslan — sentenced to life imprisonment — and Eyad al-Gharib, the first trial against officials of Bashar al-Assad’s regime; the 2025 sentencing of military doctor Alaa M., also to life imprisonment, for torture in hospitals in Homs and Damascus; and the Yarmouk trial, which began in November 2025 against five militiamen and which, for the first time, includes charges relating to the use of starvation as a method of warfare. At the same time, Argentina, France, Sweden, the Netherlands and other European countries have revived or expanded their use of universal jurisdiction.
These developments demonstrate that the fight against impunity does not depend exclusively on the International Criminal Court: states, where political will exists, continue to play an essential role in ensuring that those responsible for international atrocities are held to account and can become effective instruments of international justice.
However, the situation in 2026 is far from satisfactory. Impunity remains the rule rather than the exception. The crimes reported in Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo continue to mount at a rate far outstripping judicial responses. In Syria, after more than fifteen years of conflict, the vast majority of those most responsible remain beyond the reach of any international court. In Yemen and Ethiopia, accountability remains virtually non-existent despite the gravity of the violations documented by international bodies.
The International Criminal Court can only fully exercise its jurisdiction when states are parties to the Rome Statute, when they voluntarily accept its jurisdiction, or when the United Nations Security Council refers a situation to it. However, the recurrent use of the veto by the permanent members of the Security Council has for years blocked international action in some of the most serious conflicts of the 21st century. Justice continues, all too often, to depend on geopolitical balances rather than strictly legal criteria.
Added to this is an even more disturbing phenomenon: the growing political questioning of international justice itself.
The sanctions imposed under Executive Order 14203, signed on 6 February 2025 by the US government and extended through successive designations until December of that year — affecting the Public Prosecutor’s Office and nine judges — constitute one of the most severe attacks suffered by the institution since its creation. Russia, for its part, has initiated criminal proceedings and handed down convictions against judges of the Court following the issuance of arrest warrants for crimes committed in Ukraine. Some States have openly failed to fulfil their obligations to cooperate by refusing to execute international arrest warrants, whilst others have reduced their financial contributions or weakened the diplomatic support necessary for the Court to carry out its mandate.
At the same time, organisations documenting human rights violations have been subjected to campaigns to discredit them, financial restrictions and even sanctions, as occurred in September 2025 when the US State Department imposed sanctions on Al Haq, the Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights for their cooperation with ICC investigations. When investigating atrocities entails personal risk, judicial persecution or economic isolation, the deterrent effect extends to the entire ecosystem of international justice. The consequence is clear: less documentation means less evidence; less evidence means fewer trials; and fewer trials fuel new forms of impunity.
All of this also has a profoundly negative preventive effect. International criminal justice does not merely seek to punish crimes already committed; it also aims to prevent future ones. When those responsible perceive that the likelihood of being brought to justice is minimal, the deterrent effect disappears. Impunity then ceases to be merely an injustice towards the victims of the past and becomes an incentive for future perpetrators.
These setbacks are not accidental. They follow a well-known logic: the more effective international justice proves to be, the greater the resistance from those who might be subject to it. Precisely for this reason, the response cannot be to weaken the institutions, but to strengthen them. The States Parties to the Rome Statute must ensure adequate funding for the Court, execute arrest warrants without exception, protect those who document crimes, and firmly defend judicial independence against any form of political, economic or diplomatic pressure.
The fight against impunity has never been an abstract cause. It is the difference between victims or survivors who manage to have their suffering recognised by the courts and others who die convinced that no one will ever be held to account for the crimes committed against them. It is the difference between societies capable of rebuilding themselves on the basis of truth and the rule of law, and those condemned to perpetuate cycles of violence because effective accountability has never existed. Twenty-eight years after the adoption of the Rome Statute, the question remains the same. It is not whether international criminal justice is perfect — it is not — but whether the world is prepared to accept that the alternative is impunity. Because when the law fails to reach those who hold the greatest power, justice ceases to be universal and becomes, quite simply, a privilege reserved for the weakest. That is the real threat that this International Criminal Justice Day compels us to confront.
