Niger’s military-led government has officially filed its withdrawal notice from the International Criminal Court, with the Hague-based court confirming it received the paperwork on June 18 — nine months after Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso jointly announced their intention to leave the court back in September last year.
All three Sahelian states are run by military juntas that seized power in coups between 2020 and 2023, and all three have been pulling away from Western institutions and partnerships since then. When they first announced the planned exit, they described the ICC as a tool of neo-colonial control being used by Western powers.
Under ICC rules, a withdrawal takes a full year to become effective, so Niger’s exit won’t actually take effect until June 18, 2027. Until then, Niger remains bound by its existing obligations to the court. In its statement, the ICC said that while any country has the sovereign right to join or leave a treaty, it regrets seeing a state step back from the broader effort to hold perpetrators of serious international crimes accountable. Notably, the ICC’s statement only addressed Niger — it didn’t say whether Mali or Burkina Faso have filed similar formal paperwork yet, even though they announced the same intention alongside Niger.
There’s an added layer of tension here: all three countries are dealing with brutal jihadist insurgencies tied to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, but their own militaries have also faced accusations of committing abuses against civilians — which is part of why rights groups have expressed concern about these countries shielding themselves from international accountability just as scrutiny of their own forces increases.
For context, the ICC was established in 2002 to prosecute war crimes and other serious international crimes in cases where national governments are unable or unwilling to do so. It currently has 125 member states, but several major powers have never joined, including the United States, Russia, China, and Israel.
