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For almost a year, US President Donald Trump has waged an unprecedented campaign against a core institution of international law, the International Criminal Court, seeking to end its work on the war in Gaza. This week suggested that Trump remains far from the outcome he wants.

Officials from the ICC’s 125 member states have been conferring in The Hague at their first annual assembly since US sanctions began upending the lives of courtpersonnel and those who work with them. Those governments have reiterated they have no plans to concede to Trump, and instead have made statements suggesting the court can continue functioning — including by pursuing Israeli officials for their role in the war.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant in late 2024 over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, which remain in effect. (Both men deny criminality.) Israel says alleged misconduct by the ICC prosecutor (which he denies) should render those warrants moot, but there is no sign the court sees any problem in the warrants that could provide a basis for acceding to Tel Aviv and Washington. And the court got fresh proof its members are willing to help it hold individuals accountable for atrocities, as Germany on Monday handed over a Libyan suspect who German authorities detained in July.

“It’s been a constructive mood [with] a lot of states leaning in to working together to project a sense of support for the court,” Liz Evenson, the international justice director at Human Rights Watch, told HuffPost.

Trump targeted ICC officials during his first presidency over its probes of US actions in Afghanistan, but he has attacked people connected with the court more aggressively in his second term.

The Trump administration has used America’s disproportionate global financial power and threats of further repercussions to hinder the court’s work and create a chilling effect — even as Palestinians continue to face US-backed Israeli policies that ICC judges said could constitute grave crimes, and that could undermine Trump’s own stated vision of peace for Gaza.

For the court, the past year has come to represent an existential paradox: The ICC’s pursuit of accountability over Gaza is both the reason it has a target on its back, and proof it is necessary.

“We never accept any kind of pressure,” Tomoko Akane, a judge from Japan and the ICC’s president, said during the ongoing summit.

Some suspect Trump will try to torpedo the court altogether by sanctioning it as an organization. Still, the run-up to the summit suggested growing momentum to defend the body and, by extension, the global standards intended to prevent suffering among innocents.

Nicolas Guillou, a sanctioned French ICC judge, called for the European Union to deploy a statute that would bar European entities from abiding by potential American sanctions. Governments reiterated their support for the court, given the range of global situations that could amount to war crimes and might only be tried at the ICC as “a court of last resort” when other judicial systems fail.

Advocates for international law are increasingly hopeful that countries will protect the court because of their conviction that an independent tribunal to prosecute individuals for atrocities is key to worldwide stability, and that non-members — like the US and Israel — should not determine its fate.

“I have never seen in 15 years in The Hague such camaraderie and alignment. Our differences are becoming less important because we know the whole Rome Statute system is being threatened,” Danya Chaikel, the representative to the ICC for the International Federation for Human........

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