A boat carrying 140 Somali refugees was traveling from Yemen to Sudan in the dark, early hours of March 17 when suddenly an Apache helicopter appeared overhead. Hovering over the bodies huddled on the deck below, it opened fire, killing 42 people on board.

“I knew too well that my daughter was between life and death when she went on this journey,” Sahara Osman, the mother of one of the victims told Al Jazeera. “But I have never heard of missiles raining on civilians on a boat.”

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Similarly, the ICC is out of the question because Yemen — where the offenses are occurring — has not ratified the Rome Statue, which created it. According to Beth Van Schaack, who is a visiting professor of human rights at Stanford Law School, the Security Council could refer the situation in Yemen to the ICC, but again, the U.S. would probably block the referral vote, as Russia has done with respect to Syria.

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