How Canada engages with international organizations demonstrates our sovereignty, wrote Mark Kersten, a criminal justice professor at the University of the Fraser Valley, on August 6, 2026, in The Globe and Mail. But the way Canada is ignoring its duty to the International Criminal Court signals “that our sovereignty is up for negotiation,” he argues.
Over the past year, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu—charged by the ICC in 2024 for war crimes in Gaza—has travelled through Canadian airspace three times without Canada either prohibiting such routings or interdicting him based on the ICC warrant. In other words, our government looked the other way and stayed silent. Why? Perhaps to avoid provoking the US administration which continuously has threatened Canadian territorial integrity while it works to dismantle the ICC itself.
However, Ottawa should understand, Professor Kersten writes, that “defending the ICC today is about defending Canadian sovereignty. Ensuring that our airspace is not breached by suspected atrocity perpetrators – regardless of where they are from – is about protecting our territorial integrity as much as international justice. Standing firm in our conviction that a Court that Canada helped build, as well as its judges, should be protected against unwarranted attacks is not just about international law: it speaks to who we are, what we value, and whether we take our sovereignty seriously.”
This is not only Canada’s problem, though; it concerns all ICC member-states. Writing on the Justice in Conflict platform on July 29, 2026, Professor Kersten presents international legal precedents confirming that: “sovereignty includes a state’s landmass, coastal seas and the air above (up to the edge of outer space). That should mean that even if there are not unassailable and unambiguous obligations to arrest an ICC suspect who enters a member-state’s airspace, it is only and exclusively up to the sovereign state to decide who gets to use its airspace and who doesn’t.”
At a time when the US administration has mounted a fierce lobby against the International Criminal Court, Mark Kersten asks whether it is time for a new membership drive to revitalize this pivotal multilateral instrument in an era of coercive, unaccountable hegemons and regional powers.
The full paywalled Globe and Mail article by Mark Kersten is available at https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-failing-to-fulfill-icc-warrants-is-also-a-failure-to-defend-canadas/ His accessible blog on the broader issue of airspace, sovereignty and the ICC in relation to suspected war criminals is found at https://justiceinconflict.org/2026/07/29/obligations-up-in-the-air-are-icc-member-states-obligated-to-arrest-netanyahu-when-he-enters-their-airspace/