As Trump Squeezes The International Criminal Court, More Countries Are Leaving

As the United States ratchets up the pressure on the International Criminal Court, sanctioning two more high-ranking staff members in recent weeks, a small but growing number of the global tribunal’s member states have announced they will quit the institution.

The recent departure of Venezuela and Chad brings the number of countries to pull out of the court in the past year to five, joining Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. The surge in withdrawals comes as the ICC faces hostility from Washington and a leadership crisis after ousting its own chief prosecutor.

“Five countries so far have announced plans to withdraw from the Rome Statute, and we welcome more announcements in the future,” a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department told The Associated Press.

The Rome Statute established the ICC in 2002 as the court of last resort to prosecute individuals responsible for the world’s most heinous atrocities: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression. Based in The Hague, it takes on cases when nations are unable or unwilling to prosecute crimes on their own territory.

“The ICC regrets any decision to depart from the collective effort to end impunity for the most serious international crimes,” the court's spokesperson Oriane Maillet told the AP.

- America is piling on the pressure -

In July, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the U.S. was launching a “sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court to U.S. sovereignty.”

Rubio said he will pressure the court’s 125 member states to withdraw from the institution, sanction organizations that work with the court and ban staff from traveling to the United States. Trump’s administration already has sanctioned a dozen ICC staff in retaliation for warrants the court has issued for top Israeli officials over the war in Gaza and investigations into U.S. personnel in Afghanistan.

The Central African country of Chad specifically cited the United States in its decision to withdraw. Its Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Sabre Fadoul said in a statement that in a phone call with a U.S. official on July 23, “the American side expressed its concerns regarding the functioning of this institution and requested that Chad reconsider” its membership.

Four days later, Chad said it would leave the ICC.

Iva Vukušić, a researcher at Utrecht University, told the AP that the U.S. campaign will lay bare just how committed countries are to the court. “Are they willing to defend it if it costs them something real?” she said.

The State Department told AP the U.S. would call upon nations that “enjoy the benefits of the U.S. security umbrella” to reject the ICC.

- Some countries claim the court engages in selective justice -

It's not just pressure from Trump that is sending ICC members toward the exit door.

The ruling military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger blamed selective justice. The ICC has become an “instrument of neocolonial repression in the hands of imperialism,” the trio said when they announced their departures last year.

A coup ousted Niger’s democratically elected government in 2023. Since then, a military junta has abandoned longtime partners and has formed new alliances instead, including with Russia, where President Vladimir Putin faces an ICC arrest warrant linked to the war in Ukraine. Mali and Burkina Faso have undergone similar transformations.

“These countries are ruled by authoritarian leaders who want to avoid accountability for the harms they are inflicting on their own people,” Mel O’Brien, an associate professor of international law at the University of Western Australia, told the AP.

Burundi similarly accused the court of focusing too much on conflicts in Africa when, in 2017, it became the first country to leave the ICC. The court had opened an investigation into the East African nation earlier that year.

Most of the court's initial investigations were into African countries, though most requested the involvement of the ICC.

South Africa and Gambia also announced in 2017 that they would leave but later changed course.

A change of government can also bring a country back into the fold. Hungary announced it would quit the court in 2025 but following the election of a new government, the country's parliament voted to stay.

- Past crimes still fall under the court’s jurisdiction -

The court also had an active investigation in the Philippines when then-President Rodrigo Duterte said his country would leave the ICC. In 2019 the Southeast Asian country became the second country to leave but as withdrawal from the court is not retroactive, the investigation continued.

Duterte is now in ICC detention in the Netherlands awaiting trial on charges of crimes against humanity for deadly anti-drug crackdowns he allegedly oversaw while in office. Opening statements are set for November.

An investigation into possible crimes committed by Venezuelan security forces under former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro will continue despite the country’s announcement last month that it will also leave the ICC.

In a statement, the country's Foreign Minister Félix Plasencia said the court had been “instrumentalized to deepen inequalities among peoples and disregard their right to self-determination and sovereignty.”

Venezuela is currently in the middle of U.S.-backed talks between the ruling party and the opposition following Maduro's capture in January by U.S. forces.

- The court has also welcomed new members -

Ukraine is the court's most recent addition. The country joined in 2025 and previously had signed an agreement to give the court jurisdiction over crimes on its territory, following the outbreak of hostilities with Russia in 2014.

Joining the court was “Ukraine’s way of saying that accountability for the gravest crimes cannot be optional, and that we intend to help build that system of justice,” the country's ambassador to the Netherlands, Andriy Kostin, told AP.
-AP