NEWS
Burkina Faso leaves the International Criminal Court while remaining the world's country most affected by terrorism
July 2026
The facts
In September 2025, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger jointly announced their intention to withdraw from the International Criminal Court, calling it 'instrumentalized for political purposes' (Alliance of Sahel States statement). The Global Terrorism Index 2026 confirms that Burkina Faso remains, for the second consecutive year, the country most affected by terrorism worldwide, accounting for nearly a fifth of all terrorism deaths globally. In February 2026 the jihadist group JNIM (an al-Qaeda affiliate) carried out a week-long series of coordinated attacks across eastern and northern Burkina Faso. That same month the military government announced the dissolution of all political parties. The UN Human Rights Office continues to receive reports of enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests in the country. On the security front, the government relies both on the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP) — civilian militias previously accused of mass killings of civilians — and, since 2023, on the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, rebranded as Africa Corps.
Legal commentary
Withdrawal from the Rome Statute does not erase the ICC's jurisdiction over crimes committed while the state was a member, but it signals a rejection of any future accountability before that Court — a retreat of accountability infrastructure at the very moment when the documented violations (enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, attacks on civilians) would fall within its competence. Killings by jihadist groups and violations committed by state or paramilitary forces both fall under humanitarian law applicable to non-international armed conflicts (Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions), regardless of who commits them.
Implications — the symmetry test
Here the test is clean almost by construction: jihadist groups commit systematic violations against civilians; government forces and their allies (VDP, Wagner/Africa Corps) have a documented record of mass killings of their own; and the state, instead of strengthening accountability, is withdrawing from it. None of the three actors comes out clean. This is exactly the three-way symmetry — jihadists, junta, external actor — the SDR-70 dossier called for.
Fonti: Vision of Humanity (GTI 2026) · Global Centre for the R2P · CFR Global Conflict Tracker · Congressional Research Service