On 9 October 2026, the Trump administration placed the International Criminal Court itself on the US Treasury's Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List, escalating its sanctions campaign from individual officials to the institution as a whole.

The designation, issued by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), subjects the Court to US asset-blocking and transaction restrictions. It marks a decisive shift from earlier measures targeting individual ICC judges and prosecutors, including Court President Tomoko Akane. The move threatens the Court's access to financial institutions, commercial services, and technological infrastructure.

The announcement came hours after Navi Pillay, a former ICC and ICTR judge, won the Nobel Peace Prize, and followed weeks of speculation during the opening of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly in New York in September.

What do the general licenses allow?

OFAC issued four general licenses alongside the designation, creating exceptions to the restrictions:

• General License 13 — temporarily authorizes transactions necessary to maintain or wind down the Court's operations, including contributions from States Parties, salaries, insurance, utilities, and routine commercial services, until 7 April 2027.
• General License 14 — permits telecommunications, internet services, enterprise software, cybersecurity, and certain cloud-based services to continue, with no specified expiration date.
• General License 15 — authorizes the processing of pension payments, subject to restrictions concerning sanctioned individuals.
• General License 16 — allows transactions necessary for the continued detention, health, safety, and welfare of nine specifically identified ICC detainees.

These licenses protect against immediate operational disruption, but they do not reverse the institutional designation. The Court's continued functioning now depends, in part, on the scope and durability of exceptions granted by the very government seeking to constrain its activities.

What does the designation change for practitioners?

For banks, technology providers, insurers, and law firms, any ordinary transaction with the ICC now requires careful sanctions analysis against the general licenses. The wind-down license expires on 7 April 2027, creating a hard deadline that States Parties and commercial counterparties must plan around. Institution-wide sanctions, unlike targeted measures against named officials, make routine interactions with the Court legally and financially difficult across the board, calling into question the Court's ability to secure resources and cooperation for investigations worldwide.

From engaged to destructive exceptionalism

Brianne McGonigle Leyh, Professor of Global Justice Studies at Utrecht University's School of Law, frames the 9 October announcement as a shift from "engaged exceptionalism" toward what she calls "destructive exceptionalism" — the use of a powerful state's leverage not only to exempt itself from accountability, but to disable the institutions through which accountability may be pursued.

She identifies three historical phases:

• Engaged exceptionalism — selective participation under Clinton and Obama, including the transfer of ICC fugitive Bosco Ntaganda from the US Embassy in Kigali to The Hague.
• Disruptive exceptionalism — the Bush-era Article 98(2) bilateral immunity agreements, and the Trump-era threats; John Bolton denounced the Court as illegitimate in 2018, and the US imposed visa restrictions on ICC personnel in 2019 (lifted in 2021 under President Biden).
• Destructive exceptionalism — the present institutional designation, which targets the Court's funding, staffing, technology, financial transactions, and cooperation.

"These actions must be named and resisted," McGonigle Leyh writes.

How have states responded?

At the 81st UN General Assembly session, Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten warned that attempts to undermine the ICC threaten the international legal order as a whole, declaring: "Hands off the ICC." EU Council President António Costa called threats and attacks against the Court, its officials, and its staff unacceptable, and pledged that the EU would defend the Court's independence, integrity, and ability to exercise its mandate. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for the Court to be strengthened, and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi reaffirmed Japan's support.

The Court has already moved to reduce its exposure, replacing Microsoft software with a European alternative. Proposed defensive measures include extending the EU Blocking Statute to cover ICC-related sanctions. As host state, the Netherlands carries particular responsibility for protecting witnesses, personnel, and secure facilities.

The question now is whether the Court's supporters can build the legal, financial, technological, and diplomatic resilience to sustain it under pressure. The future and credibility of the Rome Statute system depends on it.