Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have formally begun the one-year process of withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, the court’s Assembly of States Parties confirmed on Wednesday, with Niger filing its notification on 18 June and Burkina Faso and Mali following on 24 June.
This is the most consequential rupture between African states and the ICC since Burundi’s exit, and the first coordinated bloc departure in the court’s history. The three military-led governments, joined since 2023 in the Alliance of Sahel States, announced their intention last September in a joint statement condemning the court as an instrument of neocolonial repression in the hands of imperialism and pledging to build indigenous mechanisms for peace and justice. They have already left ECOWAS, expelled French forces and turned to Russian military support.
The ICC presidency responded that the withdrawals risk undermining the collective pursuit of justice and weakening global efforts to end impunity, and noted that leaving does not erase obligations incurred while the states were members. The court retains jurisdiction over conduct committed during membership.
Both things are true at once. The ICC’s docket has been overwhelmingly African for two decades while Western powers and their allies, including the United States, China, Russia and Israel, never joined at all, a structural asymmetry African critics have documented since the Kenyatta and Bashir cases. And the three juntas invoking sovereignty are fighting insurgencies in which rights groups accuse state forces, alongside jihadist groups, of possible atrocities against civilians. A withdrawal that shields victims’ abusers is not decolonisation. A court that only ever tries Africans was never fully justice. The Sahel has chosen to resolve that contradiction by exiting rather than reforming, and 400 million West Africans will live with the result.What to watch: Whether the promised indigenous accountability mechanisms of the Alliance of Sahel States acquire statutes, budgets and prosecutors within the withdrawal year, or remain communique language.