Last week, member states of the International Criminal Court voted by a large majority to remove Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, following findings of serious misconduct: an improper sexual relationship with a junior staff member, Sarah, and attempts to stop her pursuing her complaint. Khan has denied the allegations throughout and, through his lawyers, has said he will challenge the decision through every available legal avenue.
Sarah, a lawyer who has worked at the ICC since 2017, gave an on-the-record interview to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour before the vote even took place, describing what she says happened to her at the hands of the most senior person in her organisation. What she described, and how the institution around her responded, offers three lessons every organisation should take seriously.
Three Lessons for Institutions
1. Where there is genuine consent, there is no harassment
The test is, and should remain, consent. Where there is genuine consent, there is no harassment. The complication is what counts as genuine consent in a relationship with a severe power imbalance. Sarah’s own words capture it well: Khan was not just her boss, he was everyone’s boss. Where that scale of power exists, the absence of an outright “no” is not the same as freely given consent. An employee may go along with something out of fear for her job, her visa, or her career, and that is not consent in any meaningful sense.
This is why responses have to be read in context, not taken at face value. By her own account, while these incidents were happening Sarah often felt like a zombie or in a fog and found it difficult to tell Khan to stop or leave. That dissociated, fogged state may simply be the safest way a frightened person’s mind and body can get through the moment. The one time Sarah was able to draw a clear line was when she told Khan she feared she would harm herself if it continued; this was the only way that Sarah was able to stop further attempts but the reprieve was shortlived. Sarah has also described maintaining friendly correspondence with Khan and managing his moods to seem less of a threat, another recognisable survival strategy, not evidence of willingness. What changes with a power gap this wide is how carefully investigators must examine behaviour that looks like consent but is really self-protection.
The full interview is worth watching in its own right for anyone in this field, as a genuinely instructive account of how people affected by a powerful abuser actually respond, which may not be intuitive.
This is also why many organisations sensibly go further than the consent test alone. Just as companies impose rules on conflicts of interest, not because every conflicted relationship is corrupt but because the risk is foreseeable, it is prudent to have clear rules on relationships between supervisors and subordinates: disclosure requirements, reporting-line changes, or in some cases a prohibition. That is risk management alongside the consent test, not a replacement for it.
2. Getting the procedure right is the hard part, and it shows when it isn't done well
Writing a good complaints procedure is genuinely difficult. It needs to be built by people who understand investigations, customised to the organisation’s own dynamics, but grounded in established best practice, not templated or left to whoever happens to be available. It has to minimise trauma, protect privacy, keep people safe, be seen by all sides as fair, and still move efficiently.
The signs suggest that did not happen cleanly here. The ICC’s first attempt collapsed when Sarah declined to keep participating, and critics said the process had been mishandled. The matter then moved to a UN oversight body, and separately to a panel of judges, different bodies applying different approaches, reaching different conclusions on the same facts.
By Sarah’s account, after she made her complaint she was pressured to withdraw it repeatedly, at times several times a day. A process that allows that kind of sustained pressure is not protective, whatever it says on paper. A properly built procedure has to insulate someone like Sarah from exactly this, with clear rules on contact once a complaint is lodged, and real consequences for anyone who leans on a complainant to make it go away.
3. It's the culture that counters or enables bad behaviour
A case like this is never really about one individual. There will always be problematic individuals in any workplace. What determines whether their worst tendencies are checked, or given room to grow, is the culture around them. A strong culture counters bad behaviour before it takes hold; a weak one enables it, sometimes for years.
Sarah’s account points to a workplace culture that was unhealthy on its own terms, well before any question of sexual misconduct arises. Khan held an outsized concentration of power and was reactive and volatile: rage, by her account, was commonplace, and colleagues often worked to regulate Khan’s emotions in addition to their own work. A workplace organised around managing one person’s temper is already a problem in its own right. It is also exactly the kind of environment that creates the potential for abuse, because when no one feels able to question a dominant, unpredictable figure, that same unchecked power can be turned to any purpose.
This is why we talk to clients about building what we call a RISE culture: Respectful, Inclusive, Safe, Empathetic workplaces. A genuinely RISE workplace does not leave room for one person’s temperament to dictate how everyone else behaves, and does not allow seniority to place anyone beyond ordinary standards of conduct. It requires more than a procedure for handling complaints once made: a culture that keeps people psychologically safe day to day, where junior colleagues are actively encouraged, not merely permitted, to speak up early; where bystanders and first responders are trained to notice warning signs long before a formal complaint is filed; and where the organisation visibly protects people against retaliation, so fear isn’t what keeps a pattern unspoken for years.
A Sad Outcome for an Important Mission
There is something genuinely sad in how this has played out for the ICC. It is an institution built for an extraordinarily important external mission, holding the world’s worst offenders to account, often as the last resort for victims with nowhere else to turn, yet that mission has now been visibly damaged by its own failure to keep its internal culture and processes in order. By her own account, Sarah has said she came forward not only for herself, but for others who may never have had, or taken, the opportunity to speak about what they went through. It is easy for any organisation with a genuinely important mission, whether global justice, healthcare, education, or any other noble purpose, to let the urgency of that mission crowd out attention to its own culture and processes. No mission is so important that it excuses neglecting the people who carry it out.
Catalyse Consulting works with organisations across Singapore and the wider APAC region on harassment and discrimination policy design, investigations, and training. If this case raises questions about your own organisation’s processes, we would be glad to talk.
We offer a complimentary 45-minute consultation for organisations.
📩 enquire@catalyse.sg
By: Corinna Lim
Catalyse Consulting