Navi Pillay sits underneath the grand chandeliers of courtroom 600 in Nuremburg - the courtroom where nazi leaders were tried - when she learns she’s just won the Nobel Peace Prize. The South African judge is lauded for her career in international law, not least for her work at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The jury report praises her ‘exceptional courage and integrity’ in prosecuting war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Just a few hours later, on that same day early last October, the US president Donald Trump announces new, sweeping sanctions. He adds the ICC to a list of terrorist groups and corrupt regimes that US citizens, companies and organisations are forbidden to support. It’s the latest escalation, after Trump already listed thirteen judges and prosecutors of the court in the preceding year and a half. The newly announced move is meant to serve as a final blow to bring the ‘rogue court to heel’, as US foreign secretary Marco Rubio puts it. If Washington’s allies do not comply with this campaign, he added, the American government will ‘dismantle the ICC, brick by brick’.

Dutch prime minister Rob Jetten responds appeasingly. As the head of the ICC its host nation he has an important role in the conflict. The sanctions on the court won’t take effect until another six months, Jetten underlines, adding that there’s room for ‘open conversations’ to resolve this diplomatically. It’s a way of thinking that perhaps is less and less suited to the world the ICC is trying to survive in.

The age in which the court was established was ‘truly, really different’, according to those involved. It was, in hind sight, an unbelievable time, in which Russia emerged from the Cold War gravely weakened, China gradually opened up to the world, and former Soviet states were finally able to unfold into sovereign democracies along Europe’s eastern border. In the meanwhile, two temporary tribunals were created for war criminals from Yugoslavia and Rwanda. It seemed the right time for an even more radical proposal.

Two words: ‘The Hague’

At the height of summer of 1998, in a conference room in Rome, Herman von Hebel lifts his finger in the air. The Dutchman, around thirty years, with a pair of small, round glasses on his nose, has an idea. For a while already, the delegations in the room have been negotiating about a new, global and permanent criminal court, to be established on the basis of a treaty - the so-called Rome Statute. As if it’s merely an administrative detail, Von Hebel puts forward a proposal: could the words ‘The Hague’ maybe be added to Article 3 of the treaty?

The Dutchman, a legal officer at the foreign ministry, is part of a delegation sent to Rome with a clear objective. They should lobby for the International Criminal Court, as it would be named, to be located in The Hague. Von Hebel is keenly aware of his competition. Some attendants favour Nuremberg as a seat, he knows, and rumour has it Rome itself might be interested. Von Hebel plans to simply present The Hague as a fait accompli, as ‘completely logical’ and self-evidently around the corner from the Yugoslavia Tribunal and the International Court of Justice.

There is a brief silence after Von Hebel speaks. The Italian delegate raises her hand—will they try to compete after all? False alarm - they indicate their support for the Dutch proposal. Remarkably, no one puts up a fight to recruit the new tribunal to their territory. Besides himself with joy, Von Hebel calls the foreign ministry. Mission accomplished: the International Criminal Court is coming to The Hague

That summer in Rome, not all states supported the establishment of the ICC. China, Russia, and especially Israel and the US feared for their own citizens - what if they were prosecuted before this new tribunal? The great powers’ resistance was, in the end, of no avail. The 120 countries that originally established the ICC agreed that the court would be granted jurisdiction over crimes committed within member states’ borders. A US citizen in Afghanistan, or an Israeli in Palestine, can still be prosecuted - as long as Afghanistan and Palestine are a member of the court.

Another important decision was made in Rome that summer, one the Dutch delegation might have been less mindful of: the host country is obliged to protect the ICC and its staff against ‘interference against any kind’. The foreign ministry was mostly concerned with the upside, such as ‘status, and diplomatic or cultural gains’, a 2008 government review of general host country policy found.

When Von Hebel raised his hand and arranged for the words ‘The Hague’ to be committed to paper, pride and euphoria prevailed. Did they ever discuss, or even consider, the possible downsides to hosting such an international court in The Hague? ‘No, never’, Von Hebel says now.

On a Toy Story budget

Three years after Rome and at tail end of his term, the US president Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute that underlies the ICC, hoping to keep the door open for a ‘position of influence’. That door was slammed shut by his successor George W. Bush in 2002. He ‘unsigned’ the Rome Statute and implemented a law known as The Hague Invasion Act, bestowing upon the president the power to invade if a US citizen was ever to be tried in The Hague.

The law caused a stir in the Dutch parliament. Foreign minister Jozias van Aartsen promised to persuade the Americans of the fact that the move was ‘not good’ and ‘counterproductive’. But when he spoke to members of Congress in Washington, he was ‘received politely’, without any interest in his message, he says in a phone call. In The Hague itself, at the foreign ministry, the law was no cause for concern anyways, several top diplomats recall. The prospect of a US invasion was dismissed out of hand: surely things would never come to it.

The court’s first employees - eight of them - took up work that year at the temporary ICC building. The disused office on an industrial estate in The Hague overlooks a motorway, with the North Sea faintly visible on the horizon. There, on the sandy beaches of Scheveningen, a handful of Dutch citizens carried out regular patrols under the guise of the “People’s Front”, a comedic militia of sorts, founded in response to the American invasion act.

That law had been unduly reduced to a mere symbolic gesture, according to the group, underestimating the ‘deeper symbolic significance’. ‘This is a grave mistake’, they stated on their website. Militia members pitched in their last savings to buy sand bags and constructed a miles-long fortification dotting the coast - including life-sized wooden soldiers ‘keeping watch’. Their eyes were turned towards the sea. That’s where the Americans would come from.

The US military might never bore down on the Dutch coast, nor did their paratroopers land in the idyllic dunes. The actual offensive would be launched not just from Washington, but Tel Aviv too. Above all, it would be close to invisible, relying on on devastating sanctions, spies in the streets of The Hague, hackers too advanced to be caught by Dutch police, and untraceable death threats aimed at lawyers and prosecutors.

The International Criminal Court is an exceptional court of law: it prosecutes political and military leaders for the gravest violations of international law, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It has convicted several military leaders, mostly from African nations, for torture and the recruitment of child soldiers, for example. Rodrigo Duterte, former president of the Philippines, is currently awaiting trial. Beyond that, the court has issued arrest warrants against Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The ICC itself cannot arrest them: it possesses nothing resembling a police force, and completely depends on its member countries for the arrest and transport of suspects. Its entire operation is run on a budget of only 196 million euro - roughly equal to that of Toy Story 4, or what the Chicago Police Department reserves for overtime pay. In addition, the court’s investigators often struggle to gain access to the areas where the alleged crimes were committed.

The investigators, hence, gladly make use of outside assistance. Hundreds of human rights organisations serve as their eyes and ears around the world, compiling evidence files, collecting witness statements and sharing local expertise. The prosecutors, of course, still have to corroborate such information if they wish to make use of this, though in sum it can save them countless hours of work.

The Netherlands is responsible for the institute in its entirety, which includes the network of human rights organisations. This also means that the Dutch government did not just invite the court itself. It’s outlined, in black and white, in the headquarters’ agreement the Netherlands signed: the host country is obliged to take ‘effective and adequate action’ to protect those ‘indispensable for the proper functioning of the court’ against ‘interference of any kind.’

For over ten years, the US and Israel - two of the most important Dutch allies outside of Europe - have waged a campaign of intimidation against the ICC. It goes well beyond the Trump’s much-discussed sanctions: the entire ecosystem of human rights organisations is being attacked and dismantled.

What started off with death threats aimed at staff and raids on their offices, has grown into a refined strategy, driving a wedge between human rights organisations and their financiers, or even the financial system itself.

Whilst the Dutch foreign ministry is hard at work to ensure sanctioned prosecutors and judges do not lose their bank accounts and health insurance, the near-invisible network of crucial human rights organisations is collapsing just out of view.

An investigation by the online platform Investico, weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer and German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung shows that at least twenty human rights organisations have broken off or severely curtailed their working relationship with the ICC. Investico and Süddeutsche reached out to more than a hundred human rights organisations and interviewed nine former or current top officials at the ICC and multiple former Dutch foreign ministers. What becomes clear is that the hubris of the nineties has put the Netherlands in a bind: the government is no longer capable of adequately protecting the court in the new world order.

Flowers, letters and phone calls

It begins, early 2016, with a string of suspicious phone calls, a threatening letter and a bouquet of flowers. They’re delivered to the home of Nada Kiswanson, a legal officer in The Hague. She works for al-Haq, a Palestinian NGO. Besides their main office on the West Bank, the organisation has a small department in The Hague, staffed just by Kiswanson, entirely aimed at the ICC.

The flowers arrive a year after the court announced a preliminary examination into crimes committed on Palestinian territory. In 2015, a years-long debate is finally resolved by the UN when it decides that Palestine is enough of a state to become a member of the ICC. The move brings Gaza and the West Bank under the court’s jurisdiction, prompting Palestinian human rights organisations to collect and submit as much on-the-ground evidence they can. ICC investigators cannot do so themselves: Israel never recognised the court and blocks access to the Palestinian territories.

After the bouquet of flowers, Kiswanson urges the police to take action, but they dismiss her concerns. In desperation she reaches out to the head of Amnesty’s office in The Hague. Could he help her and get the authorities to take her seriously?

At that moment, practically no one knows of his involvement. All the stranger when a week later he receives a notification on his e-mail account that someone attempted to hack him. It’s his private e-mail address, which can’t be found online anywhere.

The notification shows the exact location where the hack was attempted from: the home of a relative of Kiswanson, in a different country. ‘That was a clear message: we’re watching you, we know what you’re doing’, he says - preferring to remain anonymous due to security concerns.

‘Of course that set off alarm bells’, says Von Hebel, whom the two turned to. The Dutch diplomat who had been in Rome and succesfully lobbied for ICC its seat in The Hague, had in the meanwhile assumed the position of registrar at the court. ‘Al-Haq is Palestinian, and then you know you should to pay attention, as Israel’s intelligence service is the best in the world.’ Kiswanson was hacked several times, and kept receiving messages and phone calls with death threats. A few months after the first incident the Dutch public prosecutor finally takes action and investigates the matter.

‘The police found nothing’, says Tahseen Elayyan, a researcher at Al-Haq for over ten years, about his former colleague. ‘They were unable to trace the bank card used to pay the bouquet of flowers, or who was behind the phone calls with threats. But they concluded that this act can be carried out only by a state that has sophisticated technological capabilities.’

The police arranged a panic button and security for Kiswanson. But beyond that, the public prosecutor says in a statement, at the time they took ‘no new measures for the security of human rights defenders in response to this case.’

The authorities’ general assessment was simply that it could not have been a coordinated campaign, and that there was no strategy behind it, Von Hebel says. ‘At the time, I saw these threats more as just incidents.’

Ransacked offices and midnight raids

At the Al-Haq headquarters, in the West Bank, staff at the organisation receive a message near the end of 2015. The sender claims he’s a former employee. ‘He warned about corruption, lack of transparency, things like that’, Elayyan recalls. ‘He called himself Fadi.’ Shortly after, a second ‘whistleblower’ turns up, this time called ‘Kathy’, but bearing the same message: watch out, Al-Haq commits fraud and should not be trusted. All allegations turn out to be false. ‘Fadi’ and ‘Kathy’ quickly disappear after the Israeli newspaper Haaretz publishes about them.

‘At some point, the emails and phone calls stopped’, Elayyan says. That didn’t mean the intimidation ended. ‘They simply started working below the surface.’ Al-Haq was not approached directly anymore, but partners and donors of the organisation received emails and phone calls. ‘They got these fake emails, supposedly from the Palestinian Authority, saying: don’t give money to them, they’re being investigated for corruption.’

After Palestine becomes a member of the ICC, multiple Palestinian organisations that support the court notice that their donors are put under pressure, Investico found. Take, for example, donors of Defense for Children Palestine, a highly respected source of documentation on the maiming, torture and murder of Palestinian children.

A major German donor is repeatedly approached by NGO Monitor, an organisation that for years has attempted to defame human rights NGOs in Israel and Palestine and their donors. The lobby group is ‘an instrument of the Israeli government’, a recent investigation by Dutch newspaper NRC has shown.

‘We were spending so much time dealing with them that we instated a no contact policy at some point’, an employee of the German NGO says. The Israeli lobby organisation decides to play it differently. ‘Then, we started getting questions from German lobby groups and politicians, clearly guided by NGO Monitor and their information’, the employee explains.

When the campaign to drive a wedge between European financiers and Palestinian organisations fails, NGO Monitor and other pro-Israeli groups simply go after the financial system at large. They write letters to banks and payment service providers, alleging that Al-Haq and Defence for Children have ties to terror organisations. In 2018, Mastercard, Visa and several banks close accounts and block donations.

In 2021 the Israeli government designates these Palestinian organisations, alongside four others, as terrorist groups. For a while it’s unclear how this will affect European countries’ financial support for the designated NGOs. But as Israel fails to provide adequate evidence to support their allegations, the Dutch government publishes a joint statement with several European nations in support of the Palestinian organisations: ‘In the absence of such evidence, we will continue our cooperation and strong support for the civil society in the oPT [occupied Palestinian Territories].’

‘A month later, the Israeli army raided the offices of all designated organisations in one night’, says Sahar Francis, who served as the director of one of the organisations at the time, which also supported the ICC with evidence. ‘We were lucky. They only welded our front door shut.’ The other organisations were less fortunate. ‘At Defence for Children they took computers and files. At two others, they took everything. Chairs, tables, even kettles and kitchenware. Everything.’

All those years, the intimidation campaign continued in the streets of The Hague as well. ‘One day, two people were waiting for me outside our house’, former chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda remembers. It was 2015 and she had just announced a preliminary examination into crimes committed on Palestinian territory.

‘I didn’t know them, but they said they wanted to speak to me on behalf of someone who wanted to thank me.’ Bensouda speaks calmly, weighing her words carefully. ‘They handed me an envelope with five hundred euro in it. Please, at least make it a bit more’, she laughs. ‘Of course, they weren’t there to bribe me. They were there to say: we know where you live.’ Afterwards, on several occasions, she sees strangers taking photos of her house. She dutifully reports the incident to the ICC’s registrar, Herman von Hebel. He informs the Dutch foreign ministry and involves the police as well.

‘The police investigations led to nothing. They were not able to figure out who these people at my doorstep were’, Bensouda recalls. ‘My driver, though, had taken a photo of the license plate of their car. It came out that they’d rented it that morning, at the airport.’ Multiple people who were involved confirm that the authorities were unable to establish who rented the car. The police declined to respond to any of Investico’s questions about the incident. Yet it showed a pattern similar to the other cases of intimidation, aimed at the NGO staff in The Hague, when detectives were also unable to trace who was behind the messages, phone calls and parcels.

In that period, Bensouda requests a meeting with then-foreign minister Bert Koenders. ‘I explained to him the threats I, and my family, experienced. My message was received, I was told they’d look into it. But nothing I know of happened after that.’ Koenders says the ICC is ‘dear to him’, but does not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

‘I don’t feel supported’, says Bensouda, who this year has spoken publicly for the first time about the threats. The measures the ICC did take, such as security cameras and a panic button, were arranged by the court itself. The former prosecutor did everything she could to ask for help, she says. ‘But that did not come at all. Nothing. Maybe for political reasons’, she adds. ‘Whatever might be the case, I seriously think they could have done a lot more for my security.’

The fact that she was threatened by Israel all those years was revealed in 2024, when an investigation by The Guardian showed that Bensouda was personally intimidated and threatened by Yossi Cohen, head of Israeli intelligence in those years. The spy chief even ‘ambushed’ the ICC prosecutor in a hotel room. Bensouda continued undeterred: in 2021, just before she handed over to her successor, she opened a full investigation into crimes committed on Palestinian territory. Karim Khan, who would succeeed her, was removed from his position before the end of his term over allegations of sexual misconduct. He denied all allegations.

In 2024, the ICC issues arrests warrants against the Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, the former defense minister Yoav Gallant, and the former Hamas leader Mohammed Deif. In that year, the intimidation campaign appears to pick up speed again. Andrew Cayley, a British lawyer working on the Israel-Palestine file at the court, is visited by the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD during the spring.

‘They said I was under some type of threat, but didn’t tell me anything about how they knew, or where the threat came from’, he recalls. ‘Afterwards, the police came by my apartment as well. They said that all the French windows needed alarms, the kitchen skylight should have bars put across it, I should get an armour-plated front door and be issued a personal alarm connected to the local police station.’ Cayley accepts the police alarm but decides against the physical measures. ‘I thought: if they’re going to get me, they’re going do it on the streets.’

Months later, when the arrest warrants have been issued, Cayley receives a threatening phone call, clearly related to his work at the court. ‘I reported this to the ICC security, who in turn informed the police. They should have come by to see me, but they never did.’

The British lawyer, who left the court in 2025, is disillusioned. ‘The Dutch have no recent experience with these kinds of threats, I think. The Netherlands is a peaceful place where everything happens at a certain pace, day in day out. Serious threats, like the terrorism we experienced in Great Britain, have not been experienced for over fifty years in the Netherlands. I am sorry to say, but when something really serious is about to happen, they’re just not ready for it.’

Brick by brick

In February of 2025 the newly installed US president Donald Trump did not waste any time. Barely two weeks in office he opened the attack against the ICC. He sanctions the prosecutor, and forbids any support of the court’s investigations into citizens of the US or its allies - by which he means Israel. Last October, Trump escalated the existing measures by announcing sanctions on the entire court. Any US citizens caught in violation of these sanctions face up to twenty years in prison and a fine of up to one million dollars.

At a press conference, in the summer of this year, the US secretary of state Marco Rubio explained the attack on the ICC as a defensive measure. Trump interrupted him: ‘By the way, there’s no information that they’re after me. Just so you know.’ Pointing at Rubio, he added: ‘He’s not trying to defend me. He is trying to defend Bibi [Netanyahu] and various other people.’

Over the past year and a half, the US sanctioned thirteen ICC officials. Their fate has been extensively portrayed in the media: their credit cards have been blocked, they lost their Spotify playlists, and were forced to watch how hotel bookings were cancelled without notice.

A lesser known part of the story is that of the Palestinian human rights organisations that Trump attacked, explicitly over their support for the ICC. The directors of these three NGOs — all in their late sixties or seventies, with several European human rights awards to their name — travelled to The Hague last spring to ask the Dutch government for help. In their hotel, over breakfast, they explained how their organisations were sanctioned by the US government, barring them from the financial system.

‘Since late last year, we haven’t been able to pay a single salary’, said Issam Younis, one of the directors. ‘All our staff, and all of us’, he adds, pointing at himself and the two men across the table, ‘have been working as volunteers.’ The three organisations have been funded by European governments for years, but now, after the US sanctions, they feel they’re left to fend for themselves. ‘If our work has always been of such importance, then why does the EU not protect us?’

The hardest blows of the US-Israeli interference campaign fall outside of the public view and do not make the news. When the lead researcher at Defence for Children Palestine picks up the phone in the spring of this year, he sounds dejected. ‘I do not think we can continue that much longer like this’, he says. His organisation already faced difficulties with their bank after the 2021 Israeli terrorist designation, having to provide countless documents and supporting information for every transaction. After the US sanctions it’s gotten completely out of hand, he says.

Mere days after the call, the organisation announces it will cease operations. A wry ‘forwards’ closes off the brief statement. Defence for Children didn’t figure on any US sanctions lists, but the banks chose to play it safe - and close the childrens’ rights organisation their accounts.

The damage of the US sanctions is far more extensive than previously reported and extends well beyond the Palestinian NGOs. Investico and Süddeutsche Zeitung reached out to more than a hundred human rights organisations, finding that the global ecosystem that has supported the ICC for decades - with evidence files, witness statements, technical expertise and legal analysis - is slowly collapsing.

Take, for example, the Berkeley Human Rights Center. They have been involved in the ICC more or less since the court’s founding, helping them set up a technology advisory board that explored new types of digital evidence and investigation methods. The organisation also submitted several detailed evidence files to the court. The most recent submission, in January 2025, concerns crimes committed in Mali by Wagner, the Russian mercenary group. ‘The file contained information from Telegram channels, footage, data sets, legal analyses, things like that’, says Lindsay Freeman, former director of International Accountability at the Center.

‘When Trump was elected, we submitted everything as quickly as possibly, saying: we hope you do something with this.’ Since then, her team has been prevented from working with the ICC. As a consequence, the researchers were unable to submit an extensive file on crimes against journalists and human rights defenders in Mexico. In September, they decided to publish a report online, hoping it still could be of use to international prosecutors, including those at the ICC - even though several important, confidential parts were removed.

Investico and Süddeutsche Zeitung have found that at least twenty NGOs have ended or severely curtailed their working relationship with the court. Even renowned organisations like Human Rights Watch have discontinued their work with the ICC on their investigations. A small number of organisations has decided to continue their support in utmost secret. Several NGOs refuse to take part in events or campaigns that feature staff of the ICC or one of the sanctioned Palestinian organisations. In some cases, they even cut their funding to the latter organisations. ‘The risk of being sanctioned ourselves, and thereby endangering all of our other projects, was something we could not accept’, one German NGO explains.

The majority of interviewed organisations do not want to be identified. Human rights organisations rarely publicise their relationship with the court, omitting it from their websites and refusing to discuss it on-record.

‘A week after Trump announced the sanctions we received new contracts from a major US donor’, the director of a prominent Israeli NGO says, ‘prohibiting any contact with the ICC.’ Several organisations indicate they received similar contracts - at times even from donors who are financing projects entirely unrelated to Israel or the US, whom the sanctions are nominally meant to ‘protect’.

In the Netherlands, NGOs also find themselves in a difficult position. Due to US donors, or international departments located within the US, organisations here might still be exposed to the sanctions. ‘We have worked closely with the ICC on children’s rights, but now we’re struggling with how we could continue that work’, says Pim Kraan, director of Save the Children Netherlands.

The fact that human rights organisations, in large numbers, actively avoiding the court is unprecedented. ‘They’re a very important part of our work’, says former prosecutor Bensouda. ‘They do not investigate for us, but they do provide us with leads. They’re the first on the ground, and can point us to potential witnesses, which allows us to find ways in which we can corroborate the evidence.’

For over two decades - and mostly out of view for the outside world - human rights organisations supported the ICC. Now, entirely out of view, that ecosystem is slowly collapsing, leaving the court to fend for itself more and more.

All nice words

The Dutch government is well aware of all of this. Already in the summer of 2025, parliamentary questions showed that the foreign ministry knew of the risk that NGOs would avoid interacting with the court over fear of the sanctions. The three sanctioned Palestinian organisations appealed to the ministry on several occasions, requesting support to weather the sanctions, but were left empty-handed. The government was also acutely aware of the threats aimed at ICC officials and human rights lawyers: Bensouda’s intimidation incidents were all reported to authorities in 2015, just as the threats against NGO staff in The Hague.

In response to Investico’s questions the foreign ministry refuses to address any of the incidents specifically. They emphasise they have a ‘an obligation to make every reasonable effort’ to ‘facilitate the ICC in its mandate’, which includes the protection of NGOs related to the court, but that the Netherlands is free to interpret that obligation as they see fit.

The ministry also stresses their ‘behind-the-scenes’ work to mitigate the impact of US sanctions. In 2024, after the Israeli intimidation campaign against Bensouda was revealed, the foreign minister said the Dutch authorities would investigate the allegations. In response to Investico’s questions, the foreign ministry refuses to share the outcome of that investigation. Instead, they underline that in case of ‘improper foreign influence’ the government will not hesitate to take measures.

‘Trump literally says he wants to destroy the worldwide legal system, and what’s being done against that? Where is Europe, with their shared values?’, says Raji Sourani, the director of one of the sanctioned Palestinian organisations. ‘Privately they tell us all nice words, about their determination to protect us and the court, but publicly they say nothing. They even tell us bluntly: we feel really bad about this, but we’re not allowed to work with you any more.’

This is in line with the Dutch government’s general position: we are working hard, but behind the scenes.The foreign ministry states that it has repeatedly raised the issue of ICC sanctions with the US government, and that on one occasion they summoned the Israeli ambassador in The Hague. The Israeli government states that ‘Israel is not interfering in the affairs of the ICC; rather, the ICC is interfering in Israel’s affairs’.

The Dutch foreign ministry has refused requests for an interview or an off-record conversation, and is still reviewing a Freedom of Information request for documents submitted fourteen months ago. The Hague police, the public prosecutor, the national security agency and the ICC have also declined requests for an interview.

At the same time, there is very little the Dutch actually can do. The government has asked the European Commission to ‘prepare’ the so-called blocking statute, a measure that bans European companies and individuals from abiding by US sanctions on the ICC. Several motions have been passed in Dutch parliament demanding for the immediate implementation of the measure, but the governing coalition repeatedly called for caution and patience: the blocking statute would be implemented only when the US sanctioned the entire ICC. Now that’s come to pass, the Dutch government once again refuses to act.

Amid the hubris of the nineties, the Netherlands invited the highest authority of international criminal law unto its territory. Now, the small nation finds itself caught between the ICC and two increasingly disinhibited allies. A handful of former top diplomats and foreign ministers - who only wished to discuss the ICC on the condition of anonymity - share the same assessment: in talks with the US and Israel, there is simply always something that is more important, and above all more urgent, than the ICC. Diplomatic efforts in Washington are now centered on NATO and tariffs, in Tel Aviv conversations revolve around arms and intelligence. ‘There’s always something’, one former minister says. Another adds: ‘In the world as it is right now, are you going to give the US a talking-to over the ICC, when we’ve also got Ukraine to deal with? It’s unusually wry, sure. But that is reality.’

Prime minister of the Netherlands, Rob Jetten, proudly shakes Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky’s hand. They’ve just discussed an ‘important step’, as Jetten writes underneath the photo on Instagram last summer. The occasion calls for euphoria: the Netherlands has offered to host the tribunal that will prosecute Russia’s crimes in Ukraine. ‘The council of ministers has decided that the Netherlands, under some preconditions, wants to host this special tribunal, also during its operational phase’, the message reads.

Is this ambition realistic? Of course, there’s some conditions to the Dutch offer, foreign minister Tom Berendsen will state later. ‘Security will cost serious money, and housing the tribunal will, too.’ As long as other countries contribute their fair share to the project, all will work out. By the grace of one proud handshake, the government once more risks turning The Hague into the theater of years-long intelligence operations and a future campaign of interference. It will belong to a new world order, one we cannot even begin to imagine.

This publication was made possible with financial support from the Fonds Bijzondere Journalistieke Projecten.