Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have initiated a year-long process of withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC), the court said in a statement.
The three West African countries announced in September 2025 their withdrawal from the ICC, denouncing it as “a tool of neocolonial repression.”
The ICC is the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal, which prosecutes individuals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression when national courts are unable to act.
In a statement published on Wednesday, the presidency of the ICC’s governing body confirmed that Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger had submitted withdrawal letters and initiated the one-year process of withdrawing from the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC.
