On Monday, September 22, 2025, the military-led governments of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger declared their withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC), denouncing it as a “neo-colonial instrument of repression” incapable of prosecuting war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression, according to a joint statement reported by Le Monde and Reuters (Web:0, Web:2, Web:4). The Alliance of Sahel States (AES) countries, which seized power through coups between 2020 and 2023, accused the ICC of failing to address atrocities in their regions while serving Western interests (Web:0, Web:1, Web:3). They plan to establish “indigenous mechanisms for peace and justice,” with withdrawal effective one year after submission to the UN Secretariat (Web:0, Web:2).
The decision, discussed at an extraordinary justice ministers’ summit in Niamey, Niger, follows the AES’s January 2024 ECOWAS exit and closer ties with Russia, whose President Vladimir Putin faces an ICC arrest warrant (Web:0, Web:5, Web:6). Human Rights Watch and UN experts have accused the juntas’ forces and allied militias of war crimes against civilians amid jihadist insurgencies, alongside militant atrocities (Web:2, Web:4). The ICC has investigated Mali since 2013, following a government referral (Web:2). X posts from @AFP (September 22, 2025) broke the news, while @AfricaReport noted 74% Sahel public support for the move but 61% concern over accountability (Afrobarometer, 2025) (Post:3). The withdrawal highlights the juntas’ anti-Western pivot amid Sahel violence (Web:1, Web:7).
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