By: Dr.Nasser Hussyn Bukhari
Published By:ANI News Agency
A photograph circulating online places Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu side by side against the backdrop of the UN General Assembly hall. Its caption laments that Putin cannot address the Assembly because of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant, while Netanyahu, also wanted by the court, speaks there freely. Whatever one makes of its wording, the image captures a grievance shared far beyond social media: the rules meant to bind all states seem to bind only some.
In March 2023, the ICC issued a warrant for Putin over the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. Western capitals welcomed it as proof that no leader stands above the law. In November 2024, the same court issued warrants for Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including the use of starvation as a method of warfare. The reaction was strikingly different. Washington attacked the court rather than the conduct it described, and in 2025 the Trump administration imposed sanctions on ICC officials. Several European governments hedged on whether they would enforce the warrant if Netanyahu landed on their soil. The institution and the legal process were identical, but the response was opposite.
Fairness requires acknowledging the technicalities. Russia, Israel and the United States are not parties to the ICC's Rome Statute, so Washington, as host of the UN headquarters, has no treaty duty to arrest anyone. Netanyahu addressed the Assembly in September 2025 without incident, while Putin has not spoken there in person since 2015, and Moscow usually sends its foreign minister. But this explanation exposes the problem instead of resolving it. The gaps that shield some leaders were not created by nature. They were written into the system by those with the power to write them. When enforcement depends on which powerful patron stands behind the accused, law stops being law and becomes leverage.
The post-1945 order was built on a contradiction. The UN Charter proclaims the sovereign equality of states, yet the Security Council gives five permanent members a veto over the body's most consequential decisions. Those five can shield themselves and their allies from collective action. Both Moscow and Washington have used the veto to block resolutions on conflicts in which they or their partners were involved. The pattern extends well beyond one Russian and one Israeli leader. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, launched without Security Council authorisation on claims that proved false, produced no tribunal. Human rights are invoked loudly in some crises and quietly in others, depending on whether the violator is an adversary or an ally.
For much of the world, including Pakistan, none of this is new. Security Council resolutions on Kashmir have gathered dust for over seven decades. Palestinians have watched countless resolutions pass or die without consequence. When Western governments demand accountability for Ukraine while resisting it for Gaza, it confirms what many in the developing world long suspected: the "rules-based order" describes who makes the rules, not a promise that everyone must follow them. The cost is real. Every selective application of justice weakens the moral authority of the institutions involved. It hands cynical leaders everywhere a ready excuse to ignore international norms, since if the guardians of the system exempt themselves, why should anyone else comply? The ICC itself, short of enforcement power, is left dependent on the goodwill of the very states it might one day need to hold accountable.
It is easy to stop at outrage. But a double standard so exposed can also be a moment of clarity. It shows where the real problems lie: in the concentration of power in a handful of states, in enforcement mechanisms that answer to politics rather than principle, and in institutions designed for the balance of 1945 rather than the world of today. This is why the erosion of international law's credibility, painful as it is, offers humanity a chance to ask deeper questions. What kind of world do we want to build? One where justice depends on geography and alliances, or one where the same standard applies to a president in Moscow, a prime minister in Jerusalem, and a warlord in a distant province?
The answers are neither simple nor quick, but they are not unimaginable. Reform of the Security Council, including limits on the veto in cases of mass atrocities, has been debated for decades and blocked by those who benefit from the status quo. Wider ratification of the Rome Statute, including by the great powers themselves, would close the gap that lets them stand outside the court's reach. Middle powers and regional blocs can also refuse to treat selective justice as normal by applying the same standard in their own diplomacy, whichever capital is involved. Citizens who insist on consistency, who ask why a warrant is celebrated in one case and dismissed in another, make hypocrisy politically costly.
The picture of two leaders, both wanted by the same court, treated so differently in the same hall, is uncomfortable because it is instructive. It shows that a legal order without equal application is an order of privilege. The world need not accept this as its permanent condition. The collapse of faith in a system that applies its rules selectively is not the end of the story; it is the beginning of an overdue conversation about whether we can build institutions that deserve the trust the old ones have squandered.
