8 September 2025
The Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ) unequivocally condemns the United States’ unjustifiable decision on 4 September 2025 to sanction Al-Haq, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, and the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. These leading Palestinian human rights organisations have been sanctioned solely for engaging with the International Criminal Court (ICC), which fulfils a critical function in advancing international justice and accountability as a court of last resort for countless victims.
These organisations are critical to documenting decades of grave violations by Israeli occupation authorities. They carry out their work at great personal risk, in a context shaped by decades of military occupation, and, over the past 23 months, the unfolding genocide. Their offices are subject to repeated raids, during which property—including sensitive evidence and equipment—is confiscated, and their staff are exposed to arrest, harassment, intimidation, and travel bans.
The sanctions were imposed as part of the US’ broader campaign against the ICC, which has previously included sanctions against judges, prosecutors and other ICC officials, civil society organisations, and the UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, all of whom legitimately support the Court’s vital mandate.
Sanctioning civil society organisations for supporting accountability efforts strikes at the very foundation of the rule of law, deliberately obstructs the pursuit of international justice and seeks to intimidate those defending victims’ rights. Moreover, such measures constitute a direct assault on the Court’s independence and ultimately imperil victims’ access to justice.
Continued attempts by the US to isolate the Court and unjustifiably punish those in support of it sets a dangerous precedent that chills civic engagement and threatens the integrity of the international justice system itself. These punitive measures serve to reinforce Israel’s illegal and ongoing campaign, documented by leading human rights organisations, to stifle Palestinian civil society organisations operating in the unlawfully Occupied Palestinian Territory.
We call on the Australian Government, as a State Party to the Rome Statute, to condemn these attacks on civil society and human rights defenders engaging in legitimate accountability efforts with the ICC on behalf of victims of international crimes and to call for the sanctions to be revoked immediately.
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For media enquiries contact the Australian Centre for International Justice at: info@acij.org.au or +61 (0)433 950 787.
Image credit: (c) Shadi Tabatibi / Reuters
