Member states of the International Criminal Court removed chief prosecutor Karim Khan from office on Friday, July 24, in the first ouster of a prosecutor in the court’s history. Meeting in a special session at United Nations headquarters in New York, the Assembly of States Parties voted by secret ballot, with an absolute majority of 82 states backing his removal.

The Assembly said it found that Khan had committed “serious misconduct and serious breach of duty” and removed him under Article 46 of the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC. Its official statement did not detail the conduct behind the decision and urged respect for the privacy and rights of everyone involved. The action was a disciplinary decision by the court’s member states, not a criminal conviction.

The vote followed allegations of sexual misconduct involving a junior ICC lawyer. Documents seen by Reuters said the Assembly’s Bureau concluded last month that Khan had an inappropriate sexual relationship with the lawyer and should be dismissed. The Associated Press reported that documents it reviewed also found he had tried to prevent the woman from pursuing her allegations. Those descriptions come from the reported disciplinary findings; Khan has consistently denied wrongdoing.

Khan’s lawyer, Tayab Ali, said the British barrister would challenge the lawfulness and fairness of the decision through available legal mechanisms. Khan, 56, had been elected in 2021 to a nine-year term. The allegations emerged almost two years before Friday’s vote, and he had already stepped away from his duties while the matter was investigated.

His removal immediately starts the process of choosing a successor, although Reuters reported that a new chief prosecutor is not expected to take office before 2027. The Office of the Prosecutor must meanwhile continue its work under interim leadership, including investigations and litigation across several conflict zones.

The decision does not cancel arrest warrants or close cases already before the court. ICC judges, not the prosecutor or the Assembly, decide whether warrants remain in force. That includes the warrants issued in 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant. The United States, which is not an ICC member, has sanctioned Khan and other court officials over the Israel case; Washington previously sanctioned ICC officials over the Afghanistan investigation.

The ICC was created to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression when national systems cannot or will not genuinely act. The Assembly is its management, oversight and legislative body. Friday’s vote therefore represents member-state supervision of an elected official, while the court’s judges and ongoing judicial proceedings remain institutionally separate.

That separation is essential now. The first removal of a chief prosecutor will inevitably become part of the political contest surrounding the ICC, especially as powerful governments seek to discredit or constrain it. Yet internal accountability is not an attack on international justice. A court whose authority rests on the rule of law cannot treat its own leadership as exempt from workplace standards and oversight.

Accountability also requires fairness. The Assembly’s short public statement provides the formal finding and vote result, but not the evidence or full reasoning. Some restraint is justified by the complainant’s privacy and the rights of the parties. Even so, any review of Khan’s challenge should be independent, credible and as transparent as those protections allow. An institution does not strengthen due process by presuming that either an accusation or a denial settles the matter.

The immediate operational risk is that a leadership crisis could disrupt cases that belong not to one prosecutor, but to victims, witnesses and the states that created the court. Evidence must be preserved, staff must be protected from retaliation and witnesses must know that commitments made to them will survive a change at the top. The succession process should also avoid allowing geopolitical pressure to decide which investigations continue.

Member states now have two obligations that must be pursued together: repair confidence inside the prosecutor’s office and defend the court’s independence from outside coercion. Governments should not use the misconduct finding as a pretext to undermine lawful investigations they dislike. Nor should defenders of the ICC minimise an official accountability process simply because the court is already under attack.

The test will be what follows the unprecedented vote. A transparent selection process, effective safeguards against harassment, protection for those who report abuse and continuity across active cases would show that the institution can correct itself without abandoning its mandate. Khan is entitled to pursue a challenge, and that challenge should be heard fairly. But the principle established Friday is larger than any individual officeholder: international institutions earn legitimacy when rules apply even to their most powerful officials.