An exterior view of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, The Netherlands, on March 11, 2025. Chad on Monday announced its formal withdrawal from The Hague. File Photo Robin Utrecht/EPA-EFE
July 28 (UPI) — Chad has announced it is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, days after a U.S. official urged the central African nation to consider doing so and amid a concerted U.S. campaign seeking to dismantle the court.
In an official communique made public Monday, Chad’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it notified United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of its decision to withdraw from the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the court, following what it described as an “in-depth examination” of its operations.
The ministry said the court’s effectiveness “has remained limited and uneven in light of the expectations that led to its creation,” alleging an anti-African bias and noting that its first nine investigations concerned situations in Africa. The ICC currently lists 17 situations under investigation.
Chad also highlighted that six of the seven people in the court’s custody are being prosecuted in connection with situations in Africa.
“Taken together, these objective factors explain the perception, widely shared among numerous states and their populations, that the court’s judicial activity has remained durably concentrated on the Global South in general and on the African continent in particular, which have consistently been victims of a form of political instrumentalization of the ICC,” the ministry said.
It called on the African Union and member stats to reconsider the future of what it called an “apparently biased system” and to strengthen the African judicial mechanisms instead.
The decision, which is to take effect in one year, comes amid an intensified U.S. campaign against the ICC following the court’s issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a campaign seeking to “dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court to U.S. sovereignty.”
The United States is not a member of the ICC, and although the Trump administration has taken a more aggressive stance toward the court, the United States has long rejected the cour’s assertion of jurisdiction of U.S. nationals without Washington’s consent.
Four days before Chad announced its decision to withdraw from the ICC, Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Sabre Fadoul spoke with U.S. Under Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Frank Garcia Jr..
A statement from Chad said the call was made at the request of the United States. During the call, Garcia expressed the United States’ concerns about the ICC’s operation and requested that Chad review its membership, which Fadoul said Chad would.
“The United States welcomes Chad’s decision to withdraw from the ICC and join the growing number of nations reclaiming their sovereignty from this flawed institution,” the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs said in a statement.
“The United States will never surrender its sovereignty to an unaccountable global tribunal, and we are launching a comprehensive, whole-of-government campaign to end the ICC’s illegitimate overreach. We call on all other ICC members to withdraw from the Rome Statute.”
The announcement comes days after Venezuela announced it was withdrawing from the ICC.
Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger all announced their withdrawals from the court in June 2026.