Venezuela to exit International Criminal Court, accusing it of ‘bias’

Announcement comes as Venezuela has hewed close to Trump administration, who has pledged to’disable’ international court.

The government of Venezuela has informed the United Nations that it will withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), citing what it calls the body’s “bias” against countries in the Global South.

Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia said in a social media post on Friday that Venezuela had informed the UN of its “irrevocable” decision to withdraw from the court on the orders of interim President Delcy Rodriguez, who has sought to align her government more closely with the United States.

“Venezuela considers that the Court’s actions reflect a demonstrated geographical bias, which has disproportionately concentrated its work on African and Latin American countries, to the detriment of the Global South,” Plasencia said. “This pattern reveals an international justice system that, far from being applied equitably, has been instrumentalised to deepen inequalities among peoples and disregard their right to self-determination and sovereignty.”

The ICC announced in 2021 that it would probe possible crimes against humanity by the Venezuelan government during a crackdown on antigovernment protests in 2017, and Venezuela’s National Assembly voted in December of last year to cancel its commitments to the Rome Statute.

The ICC has sometimes been criticised for failing to apply the same standards to Western leaders as those from the Global South, and National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez previously described the body as an instrument of “American imperialism”.

But Friday’s announcement comes at a time when Venezuela has been pulled into greater alignment with the policies of the United States, and one week after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US would wage a campaign to “systematically disable” its ability to function.

Delcy Rodriguez assumed power after the US abducted former President Nicolas Maduro in a military attack in January.

The country’s subsequent rapprochement with the US has taken place under the threat of further military actions.

The US is itself a vociferous critic of the international court, which the Trump administration has sought to undermine through a variety of measures, including sanctions against prosecutors involved in probes into the actions of US and Israeli forces.

Rubio accused the ICC last week of “waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles, but with statutes, compacts, and the force of so-called international law”.

The move also comes as some have argued that Venezuela’s government has been paving the way to re-establish relations with Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been indicted by the court on charges of committing war crimes in Gaza.