It’s not just the abuse of power that’s the problem. It’s the power to abuse.
–Stefan Molyneux
When an Institution Must Judge Itself
Institutions created to judge power are often least prepared to confront it when it resides within their own walls.
That is the paradox now confronting the International Criminal Court (ICC). An institution established to challenge impunity abroad is now forced to confront a more uncomfortable possibility at home: whether power, once lodged within the institution, can begin to shape the terms of accountability from within. At moments like this, the central question is no longer only whether misconduct occurred. It is whether an institution founded on law can preserve confidence in its own processes when authority itself becomes part of the equation.
At international institutions, power rarely disappears when allegations of sexual misconduct arise. More often, it simply changes form.
A senior official accused of sexual misconduct does not enter the disciplinary process as an ordinary respondent. He enters with the authority of office, the presumption of institutional credibility, and a network of relationships cultivated over years at the highest levels of professional and diplomatic life. The complainant – often a junior staff member – enters the same process without any of those advantages.
That asymmetry does not prove guilt. But it can profoundly shape whether allegations are ever assessed on equal terms. Power does not always silence the truth. More often, it makes the truth harder to hear. It can make the process itself harder to trust and any eventual outcome harder to regard as legitimate.
Power Does Not Leave the Room
Power and politics are inseparable. When senior careers and institutional reputations are at stake because of allegations of serious workplace sexual misconduct, access to influence – whether inside or outside the organization – can shape not only narratives but also outcomes. The complainant, lacking prestige, status, and the protection of a well-positioned network, can become a bystander in her own case: watching influence operate beyond the procedural record, watching alliances quietly mobilize, and watching power attempt to define the terrain on which accountability is supposed to stand.
The ICC now confronts precisely that dilemma.
The issue is not simply whether one individual engaged in misconduct. The larger question is whether an institution founded on law can credibly investigate – and, if necessary, discipline – one of its most senior officials, ICC Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan, when the architecture of international diplomacy may already begin to tilt the process before the evidence has even been fully tested – indeed, before the disciplinary proceedings have meaningfully begun.
Sexual misconduct allegations involving senior officials are inherently difficult to adjudicate. They often occur in private. There are rarely witnesses. There is seldom a recording, a contemporaneous document, or any single piece of evidence that can conclusively resolve what happened behind closed doors. In such cases, credibility inevitably becomes central.
But credibility within institutions is never neutral. A junior employee may have only her account. A senior official may have decades of institutional relationships, personal loyalties, diplomatic goodwill, and access to powerbrokers who can quietly shape how others interpret the same facts.
The Politics of Election
When the office itself is obtained through election, that imbalance becomes even more pronounced. Becoming ICC Prosecutor is not secured by merit alone. It is shaped by diplomatic campaigns, political bargaining, regional alignments, reciprocal understandings, and the careful cultivation of support among States Parties.
In Khan’s case, his prior representation before the ICC of a senior political figure who later became the sitting head of a State Party – one with longstanding regional relationships, access to influential political networks, and direct ties to other heads of state within the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) – also became part of the political currency that helped advance his candidacy. There was nothing inherently improper about that. Rather, it was the familiar grammar of international power politics.
And once elected, those networks do not disappear.
Alongside a high-ranking office-holder stands an informal constellation of allies – former colleagues, diplomatic patrons, political supporters, and institutional loyalists – who move easily through embassies, receptions, and private channels of influence, quietly reinforcing reputations and shaping perceptions long after the ballots are counted.
That structural imbalance is troubling enough on its own. In many respects, it is embedded in the institutional reality of international organizations and may never be fully eliminated. It is part of the ecosystem in which international justice operates.
When Informal Influence Enters a Formal Process
What appears more troubling in this instance are reports – credible enough to warrant serious attention, even if not yet independently verified – that diplomatic representatives of certain States Parties have been privately approached by individuals seeking to influence how the disciplinary proceedings are understood: how the expert panel’s review of the evidence should be interpreted, whether the allegations should be viewed as unproven, exaggerated, or politically motivated, and ultimately what conclusions others should draw before the process has even begun, let alone reached its natural end.
More troubling still are reports that Khan himself has engaged in direct conversations with heads of State Parties, despite having formally stepped aside from his duties. These private tête-à-tête discussions, if accurate, can only appear aimed not merely at explaining his position but at shaping the institutional atmosphere in which the disciplinary proceedings will occur and his future with the ICC will ultimately be decided.
That distinction matters.
Once the subject of an internal disciplinary process begins privately engaging the very political actors whose governments constitute the ASP responsible for institutional oversight, the line between defending oneself and quietly managing the process becomes blurred.
Of course, Khan’s account is diametrically opposed to the complainant’s. That is hardly unusual. But in any credibility contest of this kind, preserving one version as the truth often requires portraying the other side not merely as mistaken but as dishonest – as the liar, the opportunist, or the instrument of some larger agenda.
And once that framing begins to take hold, the process itself shifts.
The concern is not limited to overt interference in the formal legal sense. It also includes a more familiar phenomenon within international institutions: discreet outreach, reputational advocacy, and private persuasion intended to shape how allegations are perceived before the formal process concludes.
That influence, moreover, need not operate only in private.
When Influence Moves Into Public View
A related point also deserves mention. Beyond any private outreach to States Parties, the parallel use of the media to shape perceptions of the proceedings raises its own concerns. Public statements attributed to Khan’s legal team – particularly characterizations of the panel’s findings as amounting to an “exoneration” or assertions that there is “no credible evidence” to support the allegations – have already begun circulating in parts of the press, including outlets willing to repeat those claims with little regard for procedural context. Whether deliberate or not, that kind of selective public framing risks turning a confidential disciplinary matter into a form of parallel litigation in the court of public opinion.
The concern is not entirely novel at the ICC. Former Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo was criticized during his tenure for appearing to litigate aspects of a case through the press, a practice that drew criticism precisely because public advocacy can blur the line between legal process and narrative management (see here). The present circumstances are obviously different; these are internal disciplinary proceedings rather than criminal prosecutions. But the underlying institutional concern is not altogether different. Once public messaging begins to shape how an unresolved matter is understood before the evidence has been fully examined, the integrity of the process comes under strain.
That matters because public advocacy of this kind can serve more than one purpose. It can consolidate support, shape institutional sentiment, and, perhaps most significantly, establish a narrative in advance: that any adverse finding is not the product of an independent process but of a compromised one. In that sense, media engagement can become more than reputational defence. It can begin to resemble an effort to pre-emptively discredit the proceedings’ legitimacy.
To be clear, this is not a criminal trial, and disciplinary proceedings do not carry the same formal restrictions that govern public commentary in adversarial litigation. But the underlying principle is not entirely different. Internal proceedings require the same basic protection against efforts to influence outcomes through channels outside the evidentiary record. That concern becomes sharper when one side appears to have established relationships with sympathetic media outlets while the other has no comparable means of shaping the public narrative. In those circumstances, the imbalance is no longer confined to the institution. It begins to extend into the public sphere as well.
Put more plainly: those with institutional influence may be attempting – quietly, informally, and with plausible deniability – to tilt the scales of the adjudicative process, one way or another.
If such concerns are substantiated, the implications are serious.
When Procedure Becomes Vulnerable
A disciplinary mechanism cannot command confidence if one party enters the process with access to channels of influence categorically unavailable to the other. In an adversarial legal proceeding, both parties are prohibited from engaging in ex parte communications with the decision-maker to prevent even the appearance of unequal access.
Disciplinary proceedings should not be held to a lower standard of ethical and procedural fairness merely because they are administrative rather than criminal.
As matters stand, a complainant may reasonably believe she is participating in a process governed by neutral rules, while the respondent may simultaneously benefit from a parallel process shaped by access, relationships, persuasion, and power. This is where institutional asymmetry becomes more pernicious. It is no longer merely an imbalance between two individuals. It becomes a distortion of the process itself.
Even the perception that the Prosecutor, on voluntary leave due to sexual assault allegations, is meeting privately with heads of state – despite having stepped aside and therefore having no obvious official reason to do so – erodes confidence in the fairness of the proceedings.
For staff within the institution, the lesson may be unmistakable: formal procedures may exist on paper, but outcomes are likely to be shaped in private by those who know whom to call, whom to persuade, and which pressure points to press quietly. That lesson extends far beyond this case.
Future complainants may conclude that unless they possess irrefutable evidence – rare in allegations of this kind – the personal cost of reporting misconduct may outweigh any realistic prospect of a fair hearing. Silence can begin to seem more rational than disclosure. Once that perception takes root within an institution, accountability becomes harder to sustain, regardless of what the written rules promise.
That may be the most damaging consequence of all.
When Conduct Around the Case Becomes Part of the Case
And there is a further point that deserves to be said plainly.
Speaking as a defence counsel, one of the first instructions any lawyer should give a client facing allegations of serious misconduct is simple: do not attempt – personally or through others – to influence the outcome of the case outside the process.
That caution is not grounded in ethics alone, although ethics plainly require it. It is also grounded in experience. Even an innocent person may fear a flawed process. The desire for reassurance that the right outcome will ultimately be reached is deeply human. Yet there remains an important distinction between anxiety about fairness and efforts to quietly shape the environment in which fairness is supposed to operate.
That distinction can itself become relevant.
Attempts to influence a proceeding through private channels do not prove the underlying allegations. They should never be mistaken for proof. But neither are they irrelevant. In some circumstances, they may support an inference that the accused is not entirely prepared to leave the matter to the evidence alone.
That distinction becomes more difficult to ignore when considered alongside other reported facts. According to The Guardian’s reporting, which reviewed the panel’s findings, Khan reportedly declined to say whether he had a sexual relationship with the complainant while simultaneously denying that any sexual contact was non-consensual. If true as reported, it is a bit Clintonian:
It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the—if he—if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement. … Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.
Standing alone, Khan’s answer may seem a narrow distinction. Yet in context – particularly if there were parallel efforts to shape how those same allegations were being privately understood by States Parties – it becomes harder to dismiss as incidental. That is why certain questions cannot simply remain unasked – under oath.
They go not merely to the allegations themselves, but to the integrity of the proceedings:
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- Has there been direct or indirect contact with heads of state or State Party representatives concerning the matter?
- Were others encouraged, expressly or tacitly, to advocate privately on his behalf?
- Has any effort been made, formally or informally, to shape the process outside the evidentiary record?
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These are not hostile questions. They are necessary ones. If the allegations are as unfounded as claimed, the obvious question is why the evidence itself was not permitted to carry the full weight of the defence; why try to game the disciplinary proceedings?
The ICC’s Hardest Test
Institutions like the ICC depend not only on legal authority but also on moral authority. They ask victims to trust the process. They ask witnesses to risk speaking. They ask states to support accountability even when doing so is politically inconvenient. But an institution cannot credibly ask others to trust its commitment to justice if its own staff begin to doubt whether justice within the institution is governed by the same principles it demands outside it.
A fair process protects against both impunity and false accusations. None of this requires prejudging the allegations. The accused is entitled to fairness. The complainant is entitled to fairness. The institution is obligated to provide both.
But fairness cannot mean merely reciting the correct procedural rules. It must also protect the integrity of the process against the informal exercise of influence that can quietly undermine those rules from within. In hierarchical institutions, the danger is not always that rules are openly broken. Sometimes the greater danger is that the rules remain intact while power simply learns to move around them. For the ICC, this seems to be the deeper challenge.
The ICC was created to confront impunity in places where power had long shielded itself from accountability. Its legitimacy now depends on demonstrating that the same culture of protection cannot quietly take root within its own walls.
The real test for the ICC is no longer whether it can prosecute power abroad. It is whether it can resist power at home. Once power begins shaping not only outcomes but also the conditions under which those outcomes are reached, the question is no longer whether justice was done. It is whether justice was ever truly permitted to stand where power could not reach it.
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