More than a year has passed since it became public that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, is under internal inquiry — conducted by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) — into allegations that he sexually abused a staff member and retaliated against individuals within the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) who reported the incident or urged a serious response. That investigation is reportedly in its final phase, with the Court and its governing body, the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), soon facing a defining decision.
But the question before them is not, ultimately, about guilt or exoneration.
At bottom, the question at issue is not just whether the OIOS fully clears Mr. Khan of wrongdoing with respect to these allegations. Rather, the decision of whether he should return to office must also turn on issues orthogonal to the investigation itself: the erosion of institutional trust, the loss of moral authority, and the need for credible leadership within an office defined by accountability. These concerns arise not from the outcome of the inquiry, but from the deep and lasting damage that the episode’s handling — and the culture it revealed — has inflicted on the Court’s integrity and cohesion, in combination with broader leadership decisions that have restricted internal dissent and repeated ethical concerns regarding bias and conflicts of interest.
Further complicating matters, The Guardian recently reported that a Qatar-linked intelligence operation targeted the alleged victim of Mr. Khan, seeking to undermine her credibility and disrupt the inquiry. That revelation only reinforces the central point: the ICC’s leadership crisis now transcends any single investigative finding. What is at stake is the Court’s ability to safeguard its integrity against both internal dysfunction and external manipulation. The issue, therefore, is not merely whether Mr. Khan should be punished, but whether the ICC can credibly function under his continued leadership.
Leadership and Morale Within the Office of the Prosecutor
This leadership challenge has already exacted a heavy toll on the institutional architecture of the OTP. Numerous current and former staff describe an atmosphere of fatigue, mistrust and resignation. The OTP’s mission — to pursue justice where national systems fail — depends on moral clarity and confidence in leadership. Once that confidence is fractured, the mission itself falters.
Under Mr. Khan, what began as a push for operational efficiency evolved into increasingly centralized decision-making and a perception that dissent was unwelcome. Whether or not every account is accurate, there is a discernible pattern in accounts: trust has eroded, attrition has risen, and morale has collapsed.
One highly emblematic incident occurred when the OTP announced arrest-warrant applications in the Afghanistan situation. Reportedly, the very lawyers who had developed the case declined to stand with the Prosecutor at the press event, including the Deputy Prosecutor overseeing the matter. The only individual who did was Lisa Davis, an academic adviser appointed by Mr. Khan himself. The optics were telling: a lead Prosecutor who is publicly isolated from his own staff prosecutors.
This challenge is compounded by additional governance concerns. Mr. Khan has been disqualified or obliged to recuse himself from major ICC matters, including the case against former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and the investigation into alleged crimes in Venezuela. In October 2025, an ICC Appeals Chamber disqualified Mr. Khan from the Duterte case for a “reasonable appearance of bias” due to his prior representation of the Philippines Human Rights Commission (an independent governmental entity established by the Constitution of the Philippines), which included providing submissions directly to the ICC that named Duterte as a suspect. Mr. Khan not only failed to recuse himself based on this conflict of interest, but formally argued that the Chamber should not disqualify him as a result of it.
Furthermore, in August 2025 the Appeals Chamber ordered Mr. Khan to recuse himself from the Venezuela investigation because of a previously undisclosed family connection to a legal team member for the government of Venezuela — Mr. Khan’s sister-in-law, with whom he also worked closely as defense counsel on other cases before the Court. These developments reinforce the core point: if his impartiality and leadership are questioned in the Court’s most significant matters, the OTP’s capacity to operate effectively under his continued leadership is fundamentally impaired. Even if OIOS were ultimately to clear him, the structural damage of these governance and ethical issues has already been done. The OTP cannot rebuild trust or perform optimally under a leader whose presence has become emblematic of institutional estrangement.
Institutional Integrity and the Credibility of Justice
Critics of a leadership change caution that removing or preventing reinstatement of a Prosecutor under investigation could risk undermining prosecutorial independence or create the appearance of politicized discipline. These are serious concerns that deserve careful reflection — indeed, the ICC’s legitimacy depends on the Prosecutor’s independence.
But independence should not be mistaken for impunity. Independence shields the Prosecutor from external interference; it does not exempt the office from internal accountability or upholding core ethical expectations. The Prosecutor’s position is not merely administrative; it represents the Court’s moral authority. When that authority is called into question by allegations of sexual assault and retaliation, compounded by broader poor governance decisions and multiple ethical issues regarding the handling of conflicts of interest, the issue becomes one of institutional integrity, not just personal culpability. Even a procedural exoneration cannot by itself restore confidence among staff, victims, or the global public in light of these fundamental issues.
Furthermore, the integrity of the investigative process itself is questionable. In my previous article, “Upholding Justice Within: Strengthening Internal Accountability at the International Criminal Court,” I contended that the Court’s internal accountability architecture remains critically underdeveloped. It is characterized by procedural opacity, limited whistleblower protections, and slow investigations that weaken staff confidence in leadership. The Independent Oversight Mechanism’s initial mismanagement of the investigation and now the OIOS’ inability to expeditiously resolve a matter involving a limited evidentiary scope, validates these concerns, a reality recently observed by ASP President Päivi Kaukoranta. The Court cannot credibly demand accountability abroad if it tolerates such ambiguity within its own walls.
The Guardian reporting underscores this point. The revelation that a foreign-linked intelligence operation targeted the alleged victim demonstrates how swiftly internal accountability crises can be exploited by external actors. It highlights that the ICC’s challenge is not confined to the veracity of any one claim, but to its ability to insulate justice from distortion — whether that distortion originates from within or from abroad. Even a favorable procedural outcome would not automatically repair the damage to morale, leadership credibility, or institutional cohesion, nor would they overcome the broader lingering governance and ethical issues introduced by this Prosecutor.
It is equally important to clarify what this moment is not. It is not capitulation to diplomatic pressure, nor is it a concession to geopolitical lobbying. There is little to no question that the misconduct allegations under OIOS review were submitted by staff within the OTP and alleged victims connected to or formerly employed by the Office — not by external actors or foreign governments. No reputable reporting suggests these allegations were initiated by intelligence agencies or foreign adversaries (see here (New Yorker), here (Drop Site), here (Wall Street Journal), and here (The Guardian)). On the contrary, available information indicates that the complaints originated internally, from colleagues and professionals within the institution. Since then, a second woman has reportedly come forward with separate allegations of misconduct.
While the ICC’s political environment has undeniably intensified, particularly following its May 2024 application for arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders, there is no credible evidence that the allegations against Mr. Khan were politically engineered. Some of Mr. Khan’s advisers speculated, as noted in Drop Site, that foreign interference may have been involved, but according to that reporting “there was — and is — no evidence for such a claim.” The political framing has instead been invoked by Mr. Khan’s supporters to conflate internal accountability with external pressure. That conflation presents a false dichotomy: that any decisive institutional response must signify capitulation rather than stewardship. The ASP need not accept that logic. It can both resist political interference and uphold principled internal accountability. Indeed, doing so would most clearly demonstrate the Court’s independence and institutional maturity.
Comparative Lessons from Other Institutions
The ICC is not the first international institution to confront allegations of serious misconduct at its highest levels. There is a well-established body of precedent showing how organizations that rely on public trust respond to such crises while preserving both due process and legitimacy.
Within the United Nations system, senior officials accused of sexual or professional misconduct have routinely been placed on administrative leave pending investigation. In multiple cases, such as that of Michel Sidibé at U.N.AIDS, leaders who were cleared of criminal wrongdoing nevertheless stepped aside permanently because the credibility of the institution could not be restored under their continued tenure. Notably, a panel of experts review found that Mr. Sidibé’s leadership had “fostered a cult of personality and patriarchal style of management” that facilitated bullying, harassment, and abuse of power. It was ultimately his failure of leadership, not the presence or absence of criminal findings, that precipitated his departure. These decisions were not punitive in the sense of presuming guilt, but rather reflections of institutional self-protection: acknowledging that “appearance” matters as much as “substance,” and that failures of ethical leadership that erode institutional stability ought to be sufficient on their own to seek a change.
Hybrid and ad hoc tribunals have applied similar reasoning. At the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, for example, a senior official accused of workplace harassment was temporarily relieved of duties pending an independent inquiry. The official “acknowledged the conduct and took responsibility for his actions” in a regulatory meeting before the Law Society of Ontario, which found that this discussion to be sufficient and that formal discipline proceedings were not necessary. Nonetheless, the official was not reinstated in full. The Tribunal assessed that leadership effectiveness demanded more than exoneration; it demanded trust.
Across these institutions, a consistent lesson emerges: when confidence in leadership has been deeply, perhaps irretrievably, eroded, institutional renewal, not reinstatement, is the path to stability. Renewal ensures institutional continuity without compromising integrity. By contrast, the ICC’s continuing hesitation risks reinforcing a perception that accountability weakens as proximity to power increases. The Court’s authority rests on the principle that no one — whether head of state or head of office — is above scrutiny. If the ICC fails to act in accordance with that principle within its own ranks, it undermines the moral foundation on which its global legitimacy depends.
The Broader Stakes for International Justice
This crisis is not confined to one individual. The ICC’s legitimacy is under scrutiny across the globe, and every internal shortcoming becomes evidence for those who argue that international justice is selective, politicized, or hypocritical.
If the forthcoming OIOS report prompts decisive and transparent action, the Court could emerge stronger as a case study in institutional maturity. But if it seeks to return to “business as usual,” it risks signaling that accountability within the very mechanisms at the center of international justice is conditional.
Imagine, for a moment, that the OIOS report exonerates Mr. Khan with respect to the particular set of allegations under investigation and the ASP restores him to office. When he walks back into the OTP, he will face the same corridors and staff who, rightly or wrongly, believe they were punished or silenced for raising concerns (irrespective of the veracity of the underlying allegations). The broader governance and ethical issues that trail Mr. Khan, and hamper the work of the Court, will not simply disappear. Junior lawyers will weigh every complaint against the fear that it could end their careers. Staff meetings will proceed in polite but brittle silence. The issue, for many, will not be what OIOS found, but what it chose to believe, and how much the institution appeared to protect its own. And moreover, the core institutional fragmentation that has taken place as a result of the leadership and ethical shortcomings of the Prosecutor will continue to damage the Court’s ability to fulfill its mandate – further indicating that the formal finding of the OIOS report is, at the end of the day, beside the point.
Externally, States Parties and civil-society partners would issue carefully worded statements of “respect for due process,” yet private confidence would fracture. Organizations specializing in gender-based-violence investigations would hesitate to collaborate. Some governments, already skeptical of the ICC’s impartiality, would question its credibility to pursue sexual-violence prosecutions while reinstating a Prosecutor accused of such conduct. Donors might quietly scale back voluntary contributions.
Meanwhile, every investigation led by the OTP would be shadowed by commentary linking the Prosecutor’s return to an unresolved leadership scandal, continuingly compounded by the leadership and ethical issues that coexist alongside that scandal. Each press conference and every public filing would be read through that lens. The result would not be restoration, but stagnation: a Court that technically survived controversy yet lost the confidence of those who make its work possible.
That is what a return after exoneration would look like — not vindication, but gradual institutional decay, continuing down the path already started.
To be sure, Mr. Khan’s tenure has yielded substantive achievements (putting aside the potential compromise of the Philippines and Venezuela situations), notably in the Ukraine and Sudan situations. Yet performance cannot substitute for integrity. The ICC’s credibility rests not only on the outcomes of its prosecutions but on the ethical standard it embodies.
As the OIOS report nears release, the ASP faces a defining choice. It can treat exoneration on these particular allegations as the only issue under consideration, or it can recognize that leadership so deeply compromised in perception and trust cannot simply be restored by procedural outcome alone in this investigation. Choosing renewal over reinstatement would not constitute judgment of guilt; it would recognize the broader context of leadership and ethical failures. It would be an act of institutional preservation.
The ICC’s future, and the credibility of the broader project of international justice, depends on affirming that justice is not only what the Court demands of others, but what it must practice within.
