THE COURTROOM where Slobodan Milosevic, the late Serbian leader, once stood trial for genocide was hardly ornate, but it had a certain bureaucratic authority. In September it closed for the last time. Remaining hearings, the presiding judge announced, would be held in a “modified conference room”. The downgrade was emblematic of the declining prestige of international criminal justice, and thus of The Hague, a city synonymous with punishing war crimes.
The seat of the Dutch government, The Hague’s global reputation is as a hub for international law. Its 50-odd international bodies and scores of related NGOs generate €2.7bn ($3.1bn) annually and support 36,000 jobs in a city with half a million residents. “We don’t make widgets, we make decisions,” says Andrew van Esch, a city councillor.
Steadily fewer, it seems. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia closed in 2017. Its remaining cases and those of a Rwanda tribunal were handed off to a residual court, now in the modified conference room. A tribunal set up to prosecute the assassination in 2005 of Rafic Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister, shut down in 2023 for want of funds. The International Criminal Court (ICC), an uber-tribunal founded in 2002, is under enormous pressure. Donald Trump has imposed sanctions on nine ICC staff members. Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor, is on leave due to allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denies.
In its history the ICC has convicted only 13 defendants; the Yugoslavia tribunal sentenced 93. It has one big fish on trial: Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines’ former president. But Italy sent a wanted warlord home to Libya. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, withdrew from the court’s founding treaty rather than honour its arrest warrant for Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister.
The city’s other major tribunal, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), is in better shape. Often called the World Court, it is the UN’s main judicial body, handling disputes between states. It has never been busier, what with South Africa’s genocide claim against Israel and a wide range of other suits.
Most Hagenaars take little notice of the courts. Outside its posh central district The Hague is rough-and-tumble, with large Muslim and white working-class neighbourhoods. As for the professionals who bet their careers on the tribunals, they are trying to “navigate the shift”, says Jill Wilkinson, head of the Hague Humanity Hub, a forum for justice organisations. There may even be an upside to the Trump administration’s hostility to international law: Ms Wilkinson has been approached by American NGOs looking to relocate to The Hague. ■
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