Tajikistan Eyes ICC Exit

Por Kulobiddin Norov — The Diplomat

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The move comes a year after Tajikistan’s refusal to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin brought a formal rebuke from The Hague.

On September 16, Tajikistan’s lower house of parliament considered a draft resolution on withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC) at an extraordinary session. The parliamentary press service reported only that “corresponding decisions were taken,” naming neither the sponsor nor the rationale and saying nothing about a plenary vote.

The domestic steps required for the withdrawal under Tajik law have not been made public. Internationally, Article 127 of the Rome Statute requires written notification to the U.N. secretary general, with withdrawal taking effect one year later; the U.N. treaty database still lists Tajikistan as a state party.

Tajikistan’s ICC membership was always a regional outlier. Dushanbe signed the Rome Statute on November 30, 1998 and ratified it on May 5, 2000. It is the only Central Asian country ever to do so. The statute entered into force for Tajikistan on July 1, 2002, five years after a civil war that killed tens of thousands.

The presumed catalyst for Tajikistan’s apparent plan to withdraw from the ICC is Russian President Vladimir Putin. In October 2025 Dushanbe hosted Putin for a Russia-Central Asia summit and a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) gathering despite an arrest warrant the ICC issued in March 2023 for the Russian president over the deportation of Ukrainian children. Weeks before the visit, Tajik officials told the court they would not execute the warrant, citing head-of-state immunity, Russia’s non-membership in the ICC, and CIS commitments to guarantee the “security and unhindered movement” of visiting leaders. The ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber II rejected those arguments on March 19, 2026, and the court’s presidency referred the non-compliance finding to the Assembly of States Parties in May.

Dushanbe was never going to arrest Putin. Russia is simply too important of a partner for Tajikistan. Russia’s 201st Guards Military Base sits in Tajikistan under an agreement that runs to at least 2042, which Moscow described at the time as virtually free . Remittances, overwhelmingly from workers in Russia, were worth the equivalent of about 49 percent of GDP in 2024, and the International Organization for Migration counted some 1.2 million Tajiks in Russia in mid-2024.

That said, a non-compliance finding does not mean a country must leave the ICC. Mongolia was found in breach in October 2024 over the same arrest warrant and remains a state party. It’s like that Tajikistan’s reconsideration of ICC membership has to do with something else entirely.

On April 10, 2025, Freedom for Eurasia, the Ukrainian Fund of International Volunteers, and the banned Islamic Renaissance Party (IRPT), represented by French lawyer Nicolas Ligneul, filed an Article 15 communication with the ICC. The filing organizations say it documents killings, torture, sexual violence, enforced disappearances, and forced exile between 2002 and 2024, and asks prosecutors to examine the responsibility of senior officials, including President Emomali Rahmon. Their chosen start date for communication is the day the ICC statute took effect in Tajikistan.

A communication does not mean a case has been open; the Office of the Prosecutor has not announced an investigation. Even if it did, exiting the ICC wouldn’t be a clean escape for Tajikistan. Withdrawal does not cancel obligations incurred while a party, and it does not automatically strip the court of jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed before the exit date. An exit would mainly limit exposure for conduct after that – which matters to the Tajik leadership given that succession from father to son is widely expected, and rumored to require Putin’s approval .

The international cost of leaving the ICC looks lower than it did even a year ago. Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger notified withdrawal in June, Venezuela and Chad in July; none of those states will be out before mid-2027. Hungary rescinded its notification on May 29, days before it was due to take effect. The EU criticized Tajikistan’s failure to arrest Putin but initialed an Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (EPCA) with Dushanbe in July 2025 anyway and aims to sign it this year. Quitting the ICC breaches no trade condition – the Rome Statute is not among the conventions the EU’s preference schemes require – but it is a poor advertisement for an agreement whose selling point is shared values.

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