Chad withdraws from International Criminal Court after US push

State Department welcomes decision, urges other members to exit

Chad’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in an official communique released Monday that it notified U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of its decision to withdraw from the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the court. The ministry said the decision followed what it described as an “in-depth examination” of the ICC’s 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 the ICC’s first nine investigations concerned situations in Africa. The ICC currently lists 17 situations under investigation, and six of the seven people in the court’s custody are being prosecuted in connection with situations in Africa, Chad said.

“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.

Chad called on the African Union and member states to reconsider the future of what it called an “apparently biased system” and to strengthen African judicial mechanisms instead.

The withdrawal takes effect in one year.

The decision came four days after Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Sabre Fadoul spoke with U.S. Under Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Frank Garcia Jr., according to a statement from Chad. The statement said the call was made at the request of the United States. During the call, Garcia expressed U.S. concerns about the ICC’s operations 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 withdrawal 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 has long rejected the court’s assertion of jurisdiction over U.S. nationals without Washington’s consent.

Venezuela announced its withdrawal from the ICC days before Chad’s decision. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger all announced their withdrawals from the court in June 2026.