How US Sanctions Left the International Criminal Court Without Health Insurance

The International Criminal Court lost its health insurance plan this week — not because of inadequate coverage, but because of American financial sanctions. The court's insurer, Axa, a major French firm with significant US business exposure, concluded that maintaining a contract with a sanctioned entity created regulatory risk it was unwilling to absorb. The ICC contract, which generated a finite amount of premium revenue, did not clear the risk threshold when Axa's compliance team weighed potential exposure to US regulatory action. The sanction achieved its goal without ever being directly applied to a French company.

This is a textbook illustration of how secondary sanctions operate in practice. Washington cannot order a French insurer to drop a client, but it can make the cost of retaining that client high enough that the firm reaches the same conclusion independently. Reuters reported this week, citing sources, that the administration has drawn up further sanctions that could further degrade the court's operational capacity. President Trump has publicly called the ICC 'evil' and 'a rogue institution,' urging other countries to withdraw, with the administration's stated grievances centering on ICC investigations involving US military personnel and Israeli officials — including an arrest warrant issued for Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The US has never ratified the Rome Statute that created the ICC, and prior administrations have maintained that distance in varying degrees. George W. Bush's administration unsigned a document Bill Clinton had signed; the Obama administration adopted a cooperative-but-not-member posture. What distinguishes the current approach is active operational degradation rather than mere non-participation. If ICC staff cannot obtain health coverage, move funds through normal banking channels, or travel freely, the court's ability to conduct investigations and trials degrades regardless of its formal legal authority.

The ICC was already operating with significant legitimacy challenges, having faced years of criticism for disproportionately prosecuting African defendants while cases involving Western-aligned actors moved slowly or stalled. American sanctions add a new layer of practical fragility. More broadly, the episode fits into a pattern — alongside US hollowing of WTO Appellate Body appointments and pressure on human rights monitoring bodies — of a superpower systematically reducing the institutional constraints on its own conduct. Governments in the Global South are watching closely, recalibrating whether international institutions provide genuine protection or whether that protection was always conditional on American approval.