As the U.S. ratchets up pressure on the International Criminal Court (ICC), sanctioning two more high-ranking staff recently, a small but growing number of the global tribunal’s member states have announced their withdrawal.
The departures of Venezuela and Chad bring to five the number of countries to withdraw from the court in the past year, joining Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
The surge in withdrawals comes as the ICC faces hostility from the U.S. and a leadership crisis after it ousted its chief prosecutor.
"Five countries have announced plans to withdraw from the Rome Statute, and we welcome more announcements in the future,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson told the AP.
The Rome Statute established the ICC in 2002 as the court of last resort to prosecute individuals responsible for the most heinous atrocities: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression.
Based in The Hague, it takes cases when nations are unable or unwilling to prosecute crimes within their borders.
"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.
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 would pressure the court's 125 member states to withdraw from the court, sanction organizations that work with it and ban staff from traveling to the U.S.
The Trump administration has already sanctioned a dozen ICC staff in retaliation for warrants the court had issued for Israeli war crimes in Palestine 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 Vukusic, a researcher at Utrecht University, told the AP that the U.S. campaign will reveal 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 the AP the U.S. would call on nations that "enjoy the benefits of the U.S. security umbrella" to reject the ICC.
It is not just pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump that is sending ICC members toward withdrawal.
Ruling military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger blamed selective justice. The ICC had become an "instrument of neocolonial repression in the hands of imperialism,” the trio said when they announced their withdrawals last year.
A coup ousted Niger's democratically elected government in 2023. Since then, a military junta abandoned longtime partners and formed new alliances, including with Russia, where President Vladimir Putin faces an ICC arrest warrant for 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 withdraw from the ICC. The court 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 withdraw but later changed course.
A change of government can also bring a country back into the fold. Hungary announced it would withdraw from the court in 2025, but following the election of a new government, its parliament voted to remain.
The court also had an investigation in the Philippines when then-President Duterte said his country would withdraw from the ICC.
In 2019, the Southeast Asian country became the second to withdraw, but because 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 Maduro will continue despite the country's announcement last month that it will also withdraw from the ICC.
In a statement, the country's Foreign Minister Felix 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.
Ukraine previously 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,” Ukraine's Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin told the AP.
