Chad is withdrawing from the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court, its authorities have announced. The step follows a government decision taken on 27 July 2026, and would take the central African state out of the only permanent court with jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.
Withdrawal is not immediate
Leaving the court is a slow procedure. Under the Rome Statute, a withdrawal takes effect one year after the United Nations Secretary-General receives written notification of it. Until then Chad remains a state party with the full set of obligations that carries. Even after the year has run, a departing state is not released from duties that arose while it was a member, including cooperation with investigations and proceedings already opened.
The objection
The International Federation for Human Rights called the move a worrying setback for the fight against impunity for the gravest crimes and for the rights of victims, saying it puts Chad’s commitment to international justice in question at a moment when that justice is facing mounting attacks and when the cooperation of states matters more than ever.
Chad would not be the first
Two states have completed the same procedure before. Burundi left the court in 2017 and the Philippines in 2019. In both cases the court carried on with matters opened while those countries were still parties, an illustration of how little a withdrawal can undo retroactively.
Why cooperation is the whole question
The court in The Hague has no police force of its own. It cannot execute an arrest warrant, enter a territory to gather evidence or protect a witness unless a state agrees to do so on its behalf. Its jurisdiction is also complementary: it steps in only where national authorities are unwilling or unable to prosecute genuinely.
Each departure therefore narrows the map on which the court can act, and for victims in the country concerned it generally leaves the domestic judiciary as the remaining route to accountability.
This report was produced by the HuMedia newsroom.
