Who Gets Held Accountable? US Sanctions Against Albanese and ICC Judges and the Missing Corporate Accountability in Gaza

[Eirini Koutsoukou is a legal researcher with a PhD in International Law, Ethics & Economics for Sustainable Development from the University of Milan.]

Introduction

Individuals entrusted with investigating and adjudicating alleged violations of international law are increasingly being targeted by US sanctions. Under Executive Order 14203, the Trump administration has sanctioned UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and half of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Judges. On 18 August 2026, ICC President Tomoko Akane was added to the designation list. The measures freeze assets, restrict their financial and institutional transactions and prohibit their entry to the US. 

The designated have filed lawsuits accusing the administration of exceeding its statutory limits. Following the LC v. Trump lawsuit, filed by Albanese’s husband and daughter, US District Judge Richard Leon granted a preliminary injunction on First Amendment grounds, holding that the sanctions constitutionally burdened protected speech and the family’s interests. In June 2026, ICC Judges Kimberly Prost, Solomy Balungi Bossa and Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini-Gansou filed a joint lawsuit in the US District Court of New York, arguing that the ultra vires sanctions impede them from exercising their mandates. 

These cases are suggestive of a striking pattern in the asymmetrical enforcement of international law. Actors mandated to investigate alleged international crimes have faced immediate consequences for performing their functions, when they conflict with the US interests. Meanwhile, States and corporations implicated in the occupation economy or genocide in Gaza, face no comparable legal response. The issue is not simply that international accountability is uneven, but that the actors entrusted to activate international law have become more vulnerable to State power than the actors whose conduct they document, despite their institutional independence. 

The post examines three dimensions of this problem. First, the evolution of Business and Human Rights (BHR) shows that corporate accountability developed faster even when the relevant legal frameworks remained comparatively weak. Second, it describes the structural limits of international obligations within US domestic law, where international protections do not automatically constrain executive action. Third, Albanese and the ICC Judges have had to invoke, somewhat ironically, the constitutional protections of the very State whose administration imposed the sanctions in the first place. Albanese’s preliminary victory came not through international law, but through the First Amendment.

What emerges is not simply an accountability gap but a hierarchy of legal power. International law can establish mandates and embed accountability, yet the ability to give effect to these mandates may ultimately depend on domestic institutions.

Weak Legal Development, Stronger Corporate Accountability

Since the Second World War, international law has developed an increasingly sophisticated body of rules addressing human rights, State responsibility, and more recently, corporate responsibility for human rights violations. The Rome Statute strengthened individual accountability for international crimes, while the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights established a global framework for addressing corporate conduct. However, greater legal development has not necessarily produced equally robust enforcement. 

The post-war military tribunals established an important precedent by extending criminal responsibility to business executives- conduct principally attributed to States and natural persons. The IG Farben, Krupp, and Flick cases convicted corporate directors for displacement, forced labour and crimes against humanity, reflecting that economic involvement in atrocities carries profound moral and legal weight. Yet, that momentum was short-lived. US High Commissioner for Germany, John J.McCloy, pardoned the convicted executives and returned their assets, prioritising industrial reconstruction over the principles the trials had established. These early cases illustrate the fragility of accountability when political and economic interests change. 

The 1998 Rome Statute excludes legal persons from the ICC’s jurisdiction, preserving a persistent accountability gap. While the 2011 UNGPs established a global standard of corporate human rights due diligence, they remain non-binding and the legally binding  BHR Treaty has remained under negotiation since 2014. Domestic and regional developments, including the French Duty of Vigilance Law, have integrated human rights due diligence into corporate governance. However, corporate accountability in conflict zones remains deeply problematic and Gaza underscores a contradiction. While international law has become highly sophisticated over the years, international courts have become more vulnerable in enforcing it against powerful economic actors, as superpower intervention now preemptively targets the judges themselves. 

Sanctioning Lawful Advocacy

Since 2023, the ICJ, UN Bodies and the broader international community have documented extensive violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Gaza, including attacks on civilians, forced famine,  and widespread disease, while assessing Israel’s conduct against the prohibition of genocide. 

In Anatomy of a Genocide (2024) Albanese concluded that reasonable grounds existed to believe Israel has been committing genocidal acts, calling upon the ICC to pursue accountability. Her report, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of a Genocide (2025) shifted attention to the economic structures sustaining the occupation. Drawing on over two hundred submissions, she identified more than sixty corporations involved in military training, surveillance, biometric data management, home demolitions, and settlement real estate. Among those named were prominent US transnational companies and firms heavily linked to allied investment networks, including IBM, Google, Caterpillar and Airbnb. Drawing a parallel to the successful UN sanctions against apartheid South Africa, that dismantled apartheid through arms embargoes, trade restrictions and financial isolation,  she urged the international community to adopt coordinated measures against the States and listed companies.

It is against this background that the US sanctions against Albanese and ICC Judges reveal the other side of this accountability gap. Since June 2025, through a series of designations that targeted half of the ICC’s judiciary, Secretary of State Marco Rubio placed Judges Alapini-Gansou, Balungi Bossa and Prost, alongside Albanese, under  Executive Order 14203, for issuing war crimes arrest warrants over Gaza. In Albanese’s case, the sanctions were issued just six days after her corporate report, accusing her of promoting economic and political “lawfare” by cooperating with the ICC, whose jurisdiction neither the US nor Israel accept. 

Underlying the administration’s rationale is the premise that any “aid”, including research, funding, or material support, provided to these individuals directly facilitates an assault on State sovereignty. Consequently, the order treats such assistance as a threat to US national security, effectively criminalising collaboration and placing American citizens at risk of severe penalties for interacting with them. 

Beyond categorising them as national security threats, the sanctions share two commonalities. First, rather than directly contesting the substance or findings of their reports, the US relies on vague, generic concepts of “threat” and “sovereignty”. Second, while the sanctions are framed as a response to jurisdictional overreach, they essentially penalise the mere exercise of such international mandates.

Administrative Measures Override International Law 

The designations raise broader questions about the relationship between international obligations and domestic law, as they target actors whose authority and legal protection derive from international law. Legally, the US is bound by the UN Charter and the 1946 Convention  on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations to respect the independence and immunity of UN Special Rapporteurs. These constitute binding international obligations that exist independently of  separate ratification.

The ICC Judges occupy a different position because the US is not a party to the Rome Statute and is therefore not bound by its privileges and immunities as treaty obligations. However, while international law prohibits States from retaliating against international officials for the lawful exercise of their mandates, those protections do not necessarily provide a directly enforceable basis in US courts for restraining an EO that violates that obligation. 

The Supreme Court’s decision in Medellin v. Texas (2008) confirms that domestic enforceability of treaty obligations depends entirely on whether a treaty is self-executing or requires implementing legislation. In other words, a treaty does not automatically generate enforceable rights in US courts unless its terms are precise and unconditional to operate without further Congressional implementation. 

Protection Through US Law

The tension between executive power and the capacity of domestic law to constrain it is evident in the protection sought by the sanctioned officials. In Albanese’s case, that protection came through a preliminary injunction obtained in a lawsuit filed by her husband, Massimiliano Calì, and their US-citizen daughter. Because the sanctions affected the family’s ability to engage in ordinary transactions and maintain their family life, the plaintiffs challenged the measures in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, under the Administrative Procedure Act, which provides for judicial review of final agency actions. The plaintiffs  argued that the sanctions were ultra vires, violating the family’s First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights exceeding the statutory limits Congress has placed on presidential sanctions authority.  

The preliminary injunction was based on First Amendment grounds, holding that Albanese’s residence outside the US did not diminish the constitutional protections available to her family, that her reports constitute protected speech which cannot be financially penalised, noting that her recommendations were non-binding. In June 2026, ICC Judges Prost, Balungi Bossa and Alapini Gansou filed a joint lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, arguing that the measures are ultra vires, violating the Fifth Amendment, the APA, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). They argue the President exceeded his statutory authority, as IEEPA requires an unusual and extraordinary threat originating outside the US to invoke a national emergency- a threshold their routine judicial decisions cannot satisfy.

 So far, the US position essentially reflects that international law does not constrain its executive action: the ICC has no jurisdiction, the UN Privileges Convention is not domestically enforceable, and  institutional immunity cannot be vindicated in domestic courts. All plaintiffs invoked the US Constitution and statutory limits on executive power. However, domestic law offers no guarantee of protection either. The cases expose a deeper vulnerability of international law: its protections for mandate holders depend less on its own institutional architecture than on the willingness and determination in enforcing them despite political inconvenience. 

Conclusions

The litigation exposes a serious asymmetry in contemporary accountability practices. The problem is not the absence of legal norms, but the uneven consequences those norms produce when powerful political and economic interests interfere.

Corporations identified in Albanese’s reports continue their operations. Whether one accepts Albanese’s conclusions or not, that sequence of events raises legitimate concerns about equality before the law, proportionality and institutional legitimacy.The significance of the litigation lies also in the recent initiative of Human Rights Watch and other human rights organisations against the Trump administration. On 11 August 2026, exactly one week before the ICC President was blacklisted, HRW and three other organisations filed a separate federal lawsuit against the administration,  arguing that the sanctions unlawfully restrict advocacy and cooperation with the Court. 

The cases reinforce  a historical paradox. The US, which played a central role in establishing the post-war military tribunals, is now attacking international institutions and officials tasked with pursuing accountability. US courts have become the forum for challenging those measures, while international mechanisms themselves remain limited in their capacity to protect mandate holders or generate consequences for the conduct they report. 

The broader challenge for international law is no longer primarily normative. The relevant legal standards, institutional mandates and accountability frameworks already exist. The difficulty is ensuring that they produce meaningful effects during power asymmetries. When enforcement depends on political will and domestic legal systems, international law remains vulnerable to the very power asymmetries it seeks to constrain. 

Photo attribution: “The International Criminal Court at The Hague” by Tony Webster is licensed under CC BY 2.0.