标签： Asia

In a watershed moment marking the first such action in the 24-year history of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a majority of member states voted Friday during a special session at United Nations headquarters in New York to oust sitting chief prosecutor Karim Khan from office over allegations of professional misconduct. The dismissal takes immediate effect, with elections to select a new chief prosecutor slated to follow in the coming period.

Secret ballot results released by diplomatic sources show that 82 of the court’s 125 member states supported the motion to remove Khan, easily clearing the 63-vote absolute majority threshold required for the decision. Thirteen member states voted against dismissal, while 15 opted to abstain from the vote.

The allegations against Khan center on claims of a sexual relationship with a junior staff member in his office, which the complainant has described as non-consensual. The disciplinary process was initiated after the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP)—the ICC’s governing executive body—concluded that evidence proved “beyond reasonable doubt” that Khan had engaged in the relationship, arguing that the inherent power imbalance between a sitting chief prosecutor and a subordinate staff member made such a relationship inherently inappropriate regardless of context.

Khan has repeatedly and forcefully denied that any sexual relationship occurred, while the complainant reaffirmed her allegations of non-consensual conduct in her first public interview on the case with CNN last week. Ahead of the vote, Khan had already stated that if removed, he would immediately appeal the decision to the International Labour Organization’s administrative tribunal, the body with jurisdiction over employment-related appeals for ICC personnel.

The historic vote has unfolded against a charged geopolitical backdrop, with heavy scrutiny over claims that the entire disciplinary process has been politicized. The removal comes just months after Khan’s office moved to request arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders over alleged war crimes committed in the ongoing Gaza conflict, a step that triggered fierce pushback from major powers including the United States. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently issued extraordinary threats to “dismantle the ICC brick by brick, if necessary,” and the U.S. has already imposed sanctions on most of the court’s senior judges and prosecutors, including Khan, over the court’s war crimes investigations into actions in Palestine and Afghanistan.

Widespread criticism has also been leveled at how the ASP Bureau managed the investigation into the allegations. A panel of independent ICC judges appointed to review the evidence unanimously concluded that no misconduct had been proven, but the ASP Bureau chose to disregard this binding legal opinion. More than 180 Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations signed an open letter last week arguing that the disciplinary process had been “reduced to a political referendum following the national interests of individual States Parties.”

A timeline of the allegations shows the alleged non-consensual conduct began in March 2023 and continued for nearly a year, with incidents reported on overseas missions and at the ICC’s headquarters in The Hague. The allegations were first brought to Khan’s attention by his own senior staff on May 2, 2024. The ICC’s internal oversight body launched an inquiry the following week, but closed it days later after the complainant refused to cooperate with internal investigators. Eighteen days after the allegations first emerged, Khan’s office formally submitted the request for arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, leading some media outlets to suggest he moved forward with the request to shore up political support amid the scandal. However, an investigation by Middle East Eye later confirmed that the decision to pursue the warrants had been finalized six weeks before the allegations against Khan were ever made public, and the application was submitted only after the first internal inquiry had concluded.

The allegations reemerged in global media and on social media in October 2024, prompting a second internal inquiry that again closed when the complainant declined to cooperate. The ASP then commissioned an external investigation led by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), which spent more than a year compiling evidence and presented a 150-page report plus 5,000 pages of supporting evidence to the independent judicial panel in December 2024. After nearly three months of review, the panel issued its unanimous March 2025 ruling that the evidence presented by UN investigators did not meet the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard to establish misconduct or a breach of professional duty.

Despite this independent ruling, a majority of ASP Bureau members voted to disregard the panel’s findings weeks later, advancing the motion to find Khan guilty of serious misconduct and suspend him from office. In another break with established protocol, the ASP Bureau altered the voting rules for the full member state session, changing the process from a two-stage vote—one on whether misconduct occurred, a second on whether removal was warranted—to a single up-or-down vote on a motion that combined both the finding of serious misconduct and the order for dismissal. This change lowered the threshold for removal, drawing further allegations of procedural manipulation.

A British barrister, Khan was elected as the ICC’s third chief prosecutor in February 2021, taking office two decades after the court was founded in 2002. During his tenure, he pursued high-profile investigations and arrest warrant requests against a number of global leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Myanmar’s ruling junta leadership, and Taliban officials in Afghanistan, in addition to the Israeli and Hamas leaders targeted in the Gaza warrants.

Luxembourg’s financial regulator will not extend its approval of Israel Bonds for sale across the European Union when the current authorization expires on 31 August, the country’s finance minister Gilles Roth has confirmed.

In an interview with domestic broadcaster RTL, Roth clarified that the non-renewal decision was reached two months ago, in May, exclusively by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), Luxembourg’s independent financial watchdog. Rejecting criticism of the regulator’s process, Roth emphasized that the CSSF operated strictly in line with EU regulatory standards, framing the outcome as a compliance matter rather than a response to political pressure from campaign groups.

This official narrative, however, clashes with the timeline of mounting advocacy against the bond program. May marked the peak of coordinated legal and political campaigning targeting Israel Bonds’ presence in Luxembourg, and the final decision aligns exactly with the core demand that activists have pushed for months. The confirmation also comes just weeks after a high-profile 21 July statement from Amnesty International warning that all EU member states, including Luxembourg, risk complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza if they continue to permit the bonds’ sale.

Unless another EU member state steps forward to assume regulatory hosting for the program, Israel Bonds will no longer be available for purchase by investors across the entire bloc. Unlike standard sovereign debt issued directly by the Israeli government, these retail bonds are distributed through the U.S.-based Development Corporation for Israel (DCI), marketed under the slogan “Stand with Israel. Israel is at War.” They are sold primarily to retail investors, religious institutions, and local public funds, often leveraging global Jewish diaspora networks and appeals to political solidarity with Israel.

Official DCI data shows the program has raised $7.7 billion for the Israeli government since October 2023, a period marked by Israel’s military operations in Gaza, Lebanon, and cross-border strikes on Iran. All proceeds flow as unrestricted general revenue into Israel’s state treasury, at a time when the country’s military spending has surged from roughly 20% to more than 30% of total government expenditure. Between 2022 and 2024, Israel’s military budget has grown from 4.2% to 8.3% of gross domestic product, pushing the country’s annual deficit to nearly 7% of GDP.

Luxembourg’s role as the EU’s regulatory host for the program only emerged last year after a similar campaign forced Ireland to end its own approval. For years before Brexit, the United Kingdom served as the bloc’s regulatory gateway for Israel Bonds, a role that transferred to Ireland after the UK’s departure from the EU. Sustained pressure from Irish parliamentarians and civil society groups, which linked bond sales to financing Israeli military operations in Gaza, pushed Irish Central Bank governor Gabriel Makhlouf to confirm in September 2023 that Ireland would not renew its authorization. On the very same day, the CSSF approved a new 12-month prospectus for the bonds without consulting Luxembourg’s Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, a move that placed the program under Luxembourg’s oversight for the past year. From that point forward, the Luxembourg government repeatedly maintained that it had no authority over the matter, stating consistently that the CSSF was the sole competent decision-making body.

Pressure on Luxembourg reached a fever pitch in May 2024, when Amnesty International Luxembourg and the Committee for a Just Peace in the Middle East hosted a capital conference bringing together legal experts, economists, parliamentarians, and international law specialists to examine the legal and financial risks of hosting the program. The conference released a detailed legal report concluding that Luxembourg’s approval of the bonds violated the country’s obligations under the UN Genocide Convention and the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 advisory opinion on the occupied Palestinian territories. The report also raised investor protection concerns, noting that DCI’s marketing material obscures significant financial and legal risks associated with the bonds: despite Israel’s ongoing war and large fiscal deficit, the bonds offer yields of less than 4%, far below the market rate investors typically demand for high-risk wartime sovereign debt.

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, told the conference that “the sale of these bonds is illegal under international law because it goes directly to funding the genocide. It is morally and legally wrong to sell these bonds.” Dr. Shahd Hammouri of Law for Palestine, a co-author of the legal report, added that the CSSF had the discretionary authority under EU prospectus regulation to reject approval when the program poses systemic risks to public interest and peace, and failed to exercise that power. Irish Senator Alice-Mary Higgins, who led advocacy that forced the program out of Ireland, clarified the stakes of Luxembourg’s non-renewal: “There is no other placement: unless we agree to transfer it as the home state, and another country agrees to take it, Israel cannot sell its bonds within the EU.”

Under EU rules, Israel now has the right to seek a new regulatory host among the bloc’s 27 member states. The Stop Israel Bonds campaign, which has coordinated cross-border advocacy across Ireland, Luxembourg, and the wider EU, has already announced its next goal: preventing the program from being transferred to Germany or any other willing EU government.

Political economist Shir Hever, who spoke at the May conference, told Middle East Eye the Luxembourg decision could mark a major turning point for Israeli financing of its military operations. “Israel finances its wars with debt,” he explained. “Bonds raise money which keep the war machine marching at the cost of a growing debt.” Hever argued that sustained pressure from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and global civil society groups drove the outcome. “If no EU member states step in after Luxembourg, it could force Israel to default on some of its debt, and at the very least will crash the value of the bonds,” he said. “Anyone who was stupid enough to buy the bonds will lose some or all of their investment. It could mean a tipping point for Israel’s economy as well. A state in default cannot import weapons and ammunition.”

Amnesty International has echoed this call, urging former host Ireland to reject any future transfer request and pressing all other EU member states to refuse to approve a new prospectus. “It is a political choice to allow these bonds to be sold in Europe,” Steve Cockburn, Amnesty’s regional director for Europe, said in the organization’s July statement. “One of the most obvious and effective ways to end Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is to stop financing it. By continuing to facilitate the sale of these bonds, EU member states risk complicity in Israel’s international crimes against Palestinians.”

Middle East Eye has reached out to the CSSF and Luxembourg’s Ministry of Finance for additional comment on the terms and timeline of the non-renewal decision.

The United Nations General Assembly is set to hold a high-stakes vote Friday on whether to reappoint incumbent U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk to a second four-year term, with the Austrian lawyer facing escalating pushback from major governments and human rights advocates over his policy stances on the Gaza war and China’s treatment of Uyghur minorities.

The nomination process itself has already sparked controversy. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres privately put forward Türk’s name for reappointment after closed-door consultations with member states, bypassing any open public debate before scheduling Friday’s vote. The fast-track process has drawn fierce criticism from multiple parties, starting with the U.S. State Department, which has labeled the rushed vote a clear demonstration of the United Nations’ systemic corruption and institutional incompetence.

In an official statement, the State Department accused Türk of ignoring documented atrocities around the world to advance a fringe ideological agenda, adding that Washington would not support rewarding what it called an unqualified political ally of Guterres with a new term. Israel’s Foreign Ministry has echoed that criticism, calling Guterres’ push for Türk’s reappointment the secretary-general’s most recent moral failure. The ministry emphasized that the selection of a new human rights chief should be left to Guterres’ successor, arguing that Türk has a years-long record of anti-Israel bias that demands accountability, not an extended tenure.

Russia has also thrown a wrench into Guterres’ plan, proposing a compromise that would only extend Türk’s term through the end of December — matching the end date of Guterres’ own second five-year term as secretary-general. The Russian U.N. mission noted that no previous high commissioner has completed two full terms since the position was created in 1993, calling Guterres’ push for a full four-year extension unprecedented. A short-term extension would leave the appointment of a permanent new high commissioner to the next U.N. secretary-general, a post currently contested by six candidates. Beyond these major powers, multiple Latin American nations including Nicaragua, Argentina and Paraguay have also raised objections to Türk’s reappointment, while the African regional bloc has stated it has no objections to the nomination.

The role of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has long been defined by its inherent tension: the holder is mandated to publicly call out human rights violations committed by U.N. member states, a requirement that almost guarantees pushback from powerful governments. Türk, a veteran U.N. diplomat who previously worked closely with Guterres at New York headquarters, has not shied away from all criticism — he strongly condemned Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine, for example. But it is his approach to two of the most divisive human rights issues in global politics that has sparked the current backlash.

On China, Türk has raised public concerns over a range of issues, from the detention of high-profile individuals including artist Gao Zhen, lawyer Yu Wensheng and Hong Kong media magnate Jimmy Lai, to assimilation and counterterrorism policies targeting ethnic minority communities in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet. Critics argue that Türk has failed to adequately follow up on a 2022 report from his predecessor, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, which concluded that China’s mass detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity.

Ken Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, has emerged as one of Türk’s most prominent critics, calling the high commissioner a disaster for the role and arguing that his failure to hold China accountable for Uyghur rights abuses is the biggest stain on his tenure. “This is the most severe state persecution of a community in the world today, and Türk has simply ignored it,” Roth said. He rejected the U.N. human rights office’s explanation that Türk combines private diplomatic engagement with Beijing and limited public advocacy, arguing that this approach amounts to sidelining the Uyghur people’s plight while pretending to take action. “The job of high commissioner is to build public pressure through tough, timely, provocative criticism,” Roth noted. “Türk has taken one of the most powerful positions in global human rights and rendered it largely harmless, speaking about abuses in terms so bland they put audiences to sleep.”

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied allegations of mass persecution of Uyghurs, maintaining that its policies in Xinjiang are designed to root out terrorism and religious extremism following years of deadly violence in the region.

On the Gaza conflict, Türk has drawn criticism from both sides for his middle-ground approach. He has openly condemned Israeli military attacks on Gaza during the war against Hamas, which drew anger from Israel and its allies. But he has also declined to join independent U.N. human rights experts who have formally accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinian civilians in Gaza — a position that has drawn criticism from pro-Palestinian advocates and many Global South nations. Israel has forcefully rejected all genocide allegations.

U.N. officials have defended the nomination process, rejecting claims of a rushed, opaque process. U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters Friday that Guterres is strictly following the 1993 resolution that established the high commissioner post, which explicitly allows for a second term. “The secretary-general is acting fully within his authority, following established rules, and the process has been transparent,” Dujarric said. “Consultations were held with member states and regional groups prior to scheduling the vote.”

A spokesperson for Türk’s office confirmed that the high commissioner is prepared to serve a full second term if confirmed, noting that the core mandate of the role is to promote and protect human rights across all countries, which requires engagement with every U.N. member state regardless of political differences.

In a significant escalation of international pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, London’s mayor Sadiq Khan has publicly labeled Netanyahu a perpetrator of genocide in Gaza and pledged to lobby the UK government to arrest the Israeli leader if he sets foot on British soil. Khan’s comments mark the second high-profile statement from a major Western city mayor in as many days, following similar remarks from New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani that have ignited global debate over accountability for alleged war crimes in the Palestinian enclave.

The controversy began earlier this week when Mamdani released a viral two-minute video address that has accumulated nearly 100 million views online. In the clip, Mamdani labeled Netanyahu a war criminal and called on the U.S. federal government to enforce the International Criminal Court’s existing arrest warrant against the Israeli prime minister during his planned September trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Mamdani argued Netanyahu is the architect of what he called a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people, noting the Israeli leader has been linked to the deaths of over 73,000 people in Gaza, the maiming of tens of thousands of children, and the killings of international aid workers and journalists. He added that Netanyahu has launched military actions in six separate countries since 2023. Acknowledging that New York’s city government lacks independent legal authority to execute the ICC warrant, Mamdani urged Washington to enforce the court’s order.

Days later, UK outlet Channel 4 News asked Khan whether he would follow Mamdani’s lead. In his response, Khan acknowledged that the London mayoralty holds different legal powers than the office of New York’s mayor, but made clear he shared Mamdani’s core assessment of the situation in Gaza. “I do believe a genocide is being committed in Gaza. I think Netanyahu is responsible,” Khan said. The London mayor added that as an alleged perpetrator of genocide, Netanyahu has broken international law, and that accountability requires the Israeli leader to be brought to justice.

When pressed to clarify whether he would lobby newly appointed UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government to enforce the ICC’s arrest warrant should Netanyahu visit London, Khan confirmed his commitment to action. “If there is any evidence of him coming to London, I’ll be lobbying the prime minister to make sure the law is enforced,” he said. Khan also noted that, for the time being, there are no indications Netanyahu plans to travel to the British capital, adding: “People who commit genocide are not welcome in London.”

The demands for enforcement follow an historic ICC ruling from November 2024, when the court issued arrest warrants for both Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from Israeli military actions in Gaza launched in October 2023. The warrants marked an unprecedented step in the court’s 24-year history: it was the first time the ICC had issued arrest warrants for senior officials from a Western-allied nation.

Under the terms of the Rome Statute, the international agreement that established the ICC, all 125 signatory nations – including every European Union member state and the United Kingdom – hold a binding legal obligation to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant and turn them over to the court for prosecution. The ICC, however, lacks its own independent enforcement mechanism, and the court cannot conduct a trial in absentia. Neither the United States nor Israel are signatories to the Rome Statute, which has allowed both governments to reject the court’s authority. As a signatory, the United Kingdom is legally required to fulfill the court’s extradition request if Netanyahu enters UK territory.

Khan’s comments were first reported and shared on social media by independent outlet Middle East Eye, which specializes in coverage of the Middle East and North Africa region.