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When the Canadian Kimberly Prost learned Donald Trump’s administration had imposed sanctions on her, it came as a shock.
For years, she has sat as a judge at the international criminal court, weighing accusations of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity; now she is on the same list as terrorists and those involved in organised crime. “It really was a moment of a bit of disbelief,” she said.
The fallout was both material and psychological. As her credit cards, Amazon and Google accounts were cancelled, she reeled from what she described as a “direct and flagrant attack” on one of the world’s most prominent courts.
“These are coercive measures designed to attack our ability to do our jobs objectively and independently,” she said. “We want people to appreciate how wrong this is.”
Since Trump returned to power last year, his administration has worked steadily to hobble the Hague-based court. To date, 11 of the court’s officials – including the chief prosecutor and eight judges – have been placed under sanctions, subjecting them to measures that include bans on travel to the US and fines and prison sentences for American companies who provide them services.
In an executive order last year, Trump accused the court of engaging in “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”, suggesting that the sanctions were in retribution for pursuing investigations into US and Israeli officials. Neither the US nor Israel is among the 125 signatories of the Rome statute, the 1998 treaty that gave rise to the court.
The executive order led 79 countries – including Canada, Brazil, Denmark, Mexico and Nigeria – to come together in support of the court. The sanctions, they said in a joint letter, “increase the risk of impunity for the most serious crimes and threaten to erode the international rule of law”.
Prior to joining the ICC, Prost had spent five years working with the United Nations on its sanctions programme. Even so, she was surprised at how far-reaching the sanctions were. “It has such a serious impact in terms of day-to-day life, it’s not symbolic,” she said. “You lose all your credit cards, no matter where they were issued.”
Simple tasks, from booking an Uber to reserving a flight or hotel room, became impossible. Bank transfers now included uncertainty over whether they would sail through the system or be rejected. Following the cancellation of her Amazon and Google accounts, Prost lived with the constant worry that her other accounts would also vanish. “Everything becomes such a challenge,” she said.
For the Peruvian judge Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza, the US sanctions marked the second time she had been targeted by a global superpower for her work with the ICC. In December, a Russian court had tried her in absentia, along with the court’s chief prosecutor and seven other judges, following the ICC’s decision to put out an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over the invasion of Ukraine. They were handed sentences of up to 15 years in prison.
But the US sanctions were on another level, given the country’s weight in the global financial system. Soon after she was sanctioned, Ibáñez Carranza said her bank in the Netherlands cancelled her credit card. “Why? It’s a European bank, not an American bank,” she said. “We’ve seen a kind of over-compliance with the sanctions, because some banks are terrified about their relations with US banks or institutions.”
What had been most painful, however, was to see how the sanctions had targeted her daughter, leading to the cancellation of her US visa and Google accounts. “She lives in another part of the world, she has no link to the ICC,” she said. “It’s sad. This is pure retaliation for something she hasn’t done.”
It was a pattern seen across the ICC, she said, where spouses, parents and children of officials had ended up caught in the dragnet of the sanctions. “This is the kind of persecution that I think the world should not allow to happen,” said Ibáñez Carranza. “We serve humanity. We are delivering justice for the most vulnerable victims around the world, for millions and millions of women and children who have no voice.”
She pointed to the critical work the court did in taking on cases when nations were unable or unwilling to prosecute crimes on their territory. “So my call is for the entire world to defend this institution that is the cause of humanity.”
The sanctions have added to an already complicated panorama for the court, landing months after its top prosecutor, Karim Khan, was accused of sexual misconduct. He has denied the allegations.
While the measures have so far focused on individuals, the court has been wrestling with fears that Washington could impose sanctions on the court as a whole. “The concern is the sanctions will be used to shut the court down, to destroy it rather than just tie its hands,” one ICC official told the Guardian last year.
The court had since sprung into action, said Prost. “It has been taken very seriously and a number of preventative measures are in place,” she said.
She and Ibáñez Carranza were resolute that the actions of the Trump administration, while challenging on a personal level, had not impacted the work of the court. “These measures are completely futile,” said Prost. “I can say that, on behalf of all of the judges of this court and the prosecutors, we will continue to do our jobs independently. It does not affect the way we look at our cases or how we decide them.”
