Hours after South Africa’s human rights lawyer Navi Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the United States would “ban transactions” with the ICC, “cutting off their [sic] resources and crippling its ability to operate against us.” The suspicious timing of the State Department announcement was left unaddressed—only that it had “been clear for over a year” about problems with the ICC and had “exercised discretion and deferred this designation out of respect….” Apparently, the Nobel Peace Prize honor to Pillay ended such respect.

Yesterday, interviewed by AP, Pillay criticized the Trump administration for issuing sanctions targeting the International Criminal Court, calling its actions “negative and cruel... I say very, very clearly. It is completely unlawful to sanction an international court, of which they are not a member.” She added that heads of state have a responsibility to “respect international law.”