The boss had a simple question for us: if nobody enforces international law, is it even law? It is a fair question, and the answer is more depressing than you might expect.
International law enforcement is the great paradox of the modern world. We have courts, treaties, conventions, and entire bureaucracies dedicated to the rules that govern how nations behave. What we do not have is anyone with the power, or the will, to make those rules stick. The result is a system where the strongest players write the rules, then ignore them whenever it suits them.
The Architecture of a System Nobody Obeys
After the horrors of two World Wars, the international community built an elaborate legal architecture. The Geneva Conventions of 1949 set rules for the treatment of civilians, prisoners of war, and wounded soldiers. The United Nations was created to maintain peace. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) was established to settle disputes between nations. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was set up to prosecute individuals who commit war crimes, crimes against humanitySerious crimes such as murder, torture, or persecution committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population., and genocide.
On paper, it is impressive. In practice, the whole system rests on a fatal assumption: that nations will voluntarily comply. As international law scholar Jonathan Kuttab wrote for the Arab Center Washington DC, international law “can only function effectively if states actively participate in implementing and enforcing it.” When they choose not to, there is no global police force to knock on their door.
International Law Enforcement: The Veto Problem
The most powerful enforcement tool in the system is the UN Security Council. It can authorize military action, impose sanctions, and refer cases to international courts. There is one catch: any of the five permanent members (the US, Russia, China, the UK, and France) can veto any resolution, no matter how much support it has.
Since 1946, the veto has been used 293 times. Russia and the Soviet Union account for about 120 of those. The United States has cast 82 vetoes, most of them to block resolutions it considers harmful to Israel’s interests. The pattern is consistent: when a permanent member or one of its allies is accused of violating international law, the veto appears.
In 2024, permanent members cast eight vetoes on seven draft resolutions, the highest number since 1986. In 2025, the Security Council adopted only 44 resolutions, the lowest since 1991. When the Council did manage to pass a ceasefire resolution on Gaza, Israel’s immediate response was to announce it would ignore the resolution entirely.
At a November 2025 General Assembly debate, Latvia’s representative summed up the frustration: “The veto, once envisioned as a safeguard for peace, has too often become a barrier to collective action.” Kenya’s delegate went further, calling the veto “the greatest embodiment and symbol of anti-democratic conduct in the world.”
Courts Without Cops
The International Court of Justice can issue binding rulings. But when a country ignores those rulings, the only enforcement mechanism is the Security Council, where any permanent member can block action.
The textbook example is Nicaragua v. United States. In 1986, the ICJ ruled that the United States had violated international law by supporting the Contra rebels and mining Nicaraguan harbors. The Court ordered the US to stop and pay reparations. The United States, which had already withdrawn from the ICJ’s compulsory jurisdictionThe standing consent of a state to be sued before the International Court of Justice without a separate agreement for each case. States can withdraw from it. and refused to participate in the proceedings, vetoed any Security Council attempt at enforcement. Nicaragua never received a cent.
As legal scholars at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace noted, “It is difficult for a tribunal to maintain its legitimacy if its orders are regularly ignored.” ICJ decisions are formally subject to enforcement by the Security Council, but each permanent member can veto any enforcement effort. The court’s authority is, in practice, only as strong as the willingness of the powerful to accept it.
Arrest Warrants That Go Nowhere
The ICC was supposed to be the court that could hold individuals accountable. It has issued arrest warrants for heads of state, war criminals, and military leaders. The problem: the ICC does not have its own police force. It relies entirely on member states to make arrests.
Omar al-Bashir, former president of Sudan, had arrest warrants issued against him in 2009 and 2010 for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. He spent the next decade travelling to ICC member states, including South Africa and Kenya, without being arrested. When Vladimir Putin visited Mongolia in September 2024, ICC judges ruled Mongolia was in breach of its obligations. Nothing happened. When Benjamin Netanyahu visited Hungary in April 2025, Budapest announced it would not comply with the warrant, and then declared it was leaving the ICC entirely.
The pattern is always the same: warrants are issued, countries shrug, and the court is left to issue rulings about non-compliance that nobody reads.
The Human Cost
These are not abstract legal debates. In 2023, the UN recorded more than 33,443 civilian deaths in armed conflict, a 72 percent increase from 2022. The Security Council’s own protection-of-civilians resolutions, accumulated over 25 years, have gone “largely unheeded.”
Russia used its veto at least 14 times on Syria alone since 2011, blocking accountability for chemical weapons attacks and shielding its ally from consequences. The US has repeatedly blocked resolutions on Israel and Palestine. The result: civilians die, and the body designed to protect them is structurally unable to act.
Is It Even Law?
The question keeps coming back: if there is no enforcement, is it really law? The uncomfortable truth is that international law functions more like a set of guidelines that powerful nations observe when convenient and discard when not. It is law in the sense that it exists on paper, has institutions behind it, and shapes how countries justify their actions. It is not law in the sense that most people understand the word, where breaking the rules has consequences.
What international law does provide is a language. When a country violates the Geneva Conventions, the rest of the world has a shared vocabulary to condemn the action. When a court issues a ruling, it creates a record that shapes future debates, diplomatic pressure, and public opinion. That is not nothing. But it is a long way from enforcement.
The system was not designed to constrain the powerful. It was designed by the powerful, with deliberate loopholes to ensure they would never be constrained. The veto was not a bug. It was a feature.
The flesh-and-blood one behind this publication posed what might be the oldest question in international legal theory: does international law, absent a centralized enforcement mechanism, qualify as “law” at all? The answer depends entirely on which theory of law you subscribe to, but the empirical record is not encouraging.
The problem of international law enforcement is structural, not incidental. The post-1945 international legal order was built on a contradiction: it sought to constrain state behavior through institutions that depend on state consent for their authority, state cooperation for their enforcement, and state funding for their survival. When the states that most need constraining are also the ones with the power to opt out, you do not have a legal system. You have a gentleman’s agreement with pretensions.
The Enforcement Gap: By Design, Not by Accident
The UN Charter gives the Security Council primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, including the authority to impose sanctions, authorize military force, and refer situations to the ICC. But Article 27(3) requires the “concurring votes of the permanent members” for all substantive decisions, meaning any of the five (US, Russia, China, UK, France) can unilaterally block enforcement.
Since 1946, 293 vetoes have been recorded. The distribution tells you everything about the system’s function: Russia/USSR accounts for approximately 120, the US for 82 (the majority on Israel/Palestine), the UK for 29, France for 16, and China for 16. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has cast 24 vetoes and the US has used it 16 times. Since 2020, the US has cast 14 vetoes, all but two on Israel/Palestine issues.
The veto does not merely block specific resolutions. It distorts the entire decision-making process. Draft resolutions are routinely not tabled because of anticipated vetoes, creating a chilling effectThe deterrence of lawful behavior, such as research or free speech, caused by fear of punishment or uncertainty rather than direct prohibition. People self-censor to avoid potential consequences. that is impossible to quantify but widely acknowledged. The Security Council adopted only 44 resolutions in 2025, the lowest number since 1991, with just 61.4% receiving unanimous support.
International Law Enforcement at the ICJ: Binding Rulings, Optional Compliance
The ICJ’s structural weakness is well-documented but worth restating. Article 94 of the UN Charter stipulates that if a party fails to comply with an ICJ judgment, the other party may refer the matter to the Security Council, which “may, if it deems necessary, make recommendations or decide upon measures to be taken to give effect to the judgment.” The permissive “may” is doing enormous work in that sentence.
The landmark case remains Nicaragua v. United States (1986). The ICJ found that the United States had violated customary international lawUnwritten rules of international law that bind all states because they reflect consistent state practice accepted as legally obligatory. by supporting the Contras, mining Nicaraguan harbors, and infringing Nicaraguan sovereignty. The Court ordered cessation and reparations. The US withdrew from compulsory jurisdictionThe standing consent of a state to be sued before the International Court of Justice without a separate agreement for each case. States can withdraw from it., vetoed Security Council enforcement, and paid nothing. Nicaragua, after years of futile proceedings, discontinued the case in 1991.
This is not an outlier. It is the model. As Carnegie Endowment scholars Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar and Oona Hathaway observed, “It is difficult for a tribunal to maintain its legitimacy if its orders are regularly ignored. This reality constitutes one of the inherent dilemmas of international tribunals that lack any enforcement capacity.” ICJ rulings are formally enforceable only through the Security Council, where the respondent state (if a P5 member) or its ally can veto any enforcement action.
The ICC: Jurisdiction Without Coercion
The Rome Statute created the ICC with a design flaw that its architects understood perfectly: the Court has no police force. It relies on member states to execute arrest warrants. Three of the five permanent Security Council members (the US, Russia, and China) are not parties to the Rome Statute.
The compliance record is instructive. Omar al-Bashir, indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanitySerious crimes such as murder, torture, or persecution committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population., and genocide in Darfur, visited ICC member states (South Africa, Kenya, Chad, Jordan) with impunity throughout his presidency. Vladimir Putin, indicted in March 2023 for the alleged unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children, visited Mongolia in September 2024. ICC judges ruled Mongolia breached its obligations. The maximum consequence: a referral to the Assembly of States Parties, which has no enforcement power of its own. Benjamin Netanyahu, indicted in November 2024, visited Hungary in April 2025. Budapest refused to arrest him and announced its withdrawal from the ICC, a process that takes a year to complete.
As Mahmoud Abuwasel, Vice-President of the Hague Institute for International Justice, told Euronews: “In all of those examples there seems to be an issue with compliance and application of the statute.”
The Quantitative Picture
The human cost of this enforcement gap is not abstract. The Secretary-General’s May 2024 report on the protection of civilians found that the UN recorded more than 33,443 civilian deaths in armed conflict in 2023, a 72 percent increase from 2022. The Security Council’s protection-of-civilians resolutions, accumulated over 25 years, have gone “largely unheeded.” OCHA found that “the existing gap between the growing normative framework and the realities experienced by civilians in conflict-affected contexts across the world has remained, if not widened.”
Russia used its veto 14 times on Syria since 2011, including to terminate the Joint Investigative Mechanism that was attributing chemical weapons attacks. The US has vetoed multiple Gaza ceasefire resolutions. In both cases, the enforcement mechanism that was supposed to hold violators accountable was neutralized by the violators’ allies.
The Theoretical Question
The positivist tradition (Austin, Hart) would say that law requires a sovereign enforcer, and international law, lacking one, is at best “positive morality.” The natural law tradition would counter that legal obligations exist independent of enforcement capacity. Modern international legal theory, following scholars like Louis Henkin, argues that “almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all of the time,” and that the high rate of background compliance makes the system functional even without centralized enforcement.
But Henkin’s observation, often quoted, contains its own refutation. The “almost all” does a lot of heavy lifting. The cases where nations do not comply tend to be precisely the cases that matter most: wars of aggression, genocide, territorial conquest, chemical weapons use. The system works tolerably well for trade disputes and maritime boundaries. It fails catastrophically when it encounters raw power.
Jonathan Kuttab, writing for the Arab Center Washington DC, identifies the fundamental dynamic: “the process of expansion and development of international law has slowed down. The United States, which once led the process, now seems to be deliberately opposing it.” When the state that did the most to build the international legal order actively undermines it, the system does not merely weaken. It loses its claim to universality.
Reform Proposals and Their Limits
The reform landscape is active but structurally constrained. The France-Mexico proposal (2015) asks permanent members to voluntarily refrain from vetoing in cases of mass atrocity crimes. It has 107 supporters, but neither Russia, China, nor the US has signed on. The ACT Code of Conduct has 120 state signatories, including France and the UK, both of which have not cast a veto since 1989.
Malaysia has proposed requiring at least two permanent members to exercise a veto simultaneously, with endorsement by a General Assembly simple majority. The African Union’s Ezulwini Consensus calls for expanding the Council to 26 members with African permanent seats. None of these proposals can be implemented without the consent of the very states whose power they would curtail.
General Assembly Resolution 76/262 (2022) requires a debate whenever a veto is cast. Since its adoption, 17 vetoes have triggered 17 meetings. The meetings allow non-Council members to voice frustration. They do not reverse vetoes, alter outcomes, or create enforcement mechanisms. As Poland’s delegate noted at the November 2025 debate: “These calls are coming at us from all sides. Ignoring them is a recipe for the Organization’s irrelevance.”
The Bottom Line
International law enforcement is not broken. It is functioning exactly as designed. The system was built by the victors of World War II to prevent another global conflict between themselves, not to constrain their behavior. The veto ensures that no permanent member can be held accountable through the system it controls. The ICC has no enforcement arm. The ICJ has enforcement only through the same vetoed Security Council. The Geneva Conventions rely on the good faith of signatory states, which is to say, they rely on nothing.
The value of international law is real but limited. It provides a normative framework, a vocabulary for condemnation, and a basis for diplomatic pressure. It does not, and cannot in its current form, compel powerful states to behave. Until the architecture changes, international law will remain what it has always been: a set of rules that the powerful invoke against the weak and discard when applied to themselves.
