NEW YORK — The International Criminal Court (ICC) is facing a critical institutional crisis as its 125 member states prepare to vote this Friday on whether to dismiss Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan over allegations of serious sexual misconduct. The high-stakes secret ballot, scheduled to take place at the United Nations headquarters in New York around 3 PM (1900 GMT), requires an absolute majority of at least 63 votes to remove Khan from his post. The internal turmoil arrives at a highly vulnerable moment for the Hague-based tribunal, coinciding with a renewed diplomatic campaign by the United States to dismantle the court, which Washington views as a threat to US sovereignty. The US has already sanctioned 11 top ICC officials and is reportedly considering diplomatic pressure to coerce other nations into withdrawing from the Rome Statute altogether.
Khan, 56, has fiercely denied the allegations, with his legal team characterizing the upcoming vote as unlawful, procedurally unfair, and entirely unsupported by evidence. They pointed to an independent panel of judges who previously concluded that a UN investigative report failed to establish the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt. However, the junior ICC staffer who leveled the accusations recently went public, emphasizing the massive power disparity that she argues precluded any possibility of mutual consent. Legal experts note that regardless of the secret ballot’s outcome, the ICC’s credibility has been severely damaged. If Khan is dismissed, critics may view it as the result of intense political blowback following his controversial pursuit of arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials for war crimes in Gaza. Conversely, if he survives the vote, his weakened position could provide adversaries with further ammunition to undermine the world’s only permanent international criminal court.
