ANALYSIS
Niger leaves the International Criminal Court while the United States and Italy continue military cooperation
September 2026
Series “The Court under siege” · 3 of 6
The facts
On January 6, 2026, a Nigerien army drone bombed the crowded Kokoloko market in the Tillabéri region, aiming to strike three Islamic State in the Sahel fighters disguised as civilians. Seventeen civilians were killed — 11 women, 2 men, and 4 children aged 5 to 10 — and another 13 were wounded. Human Rights Watch, which reconstructed the strike on the ground, writes that hitting «military and civilian targets without distinction» made the bombing unlawfully indiscriminate. On January 26 the organization sent the military junta a formal request for clarification; it received no response. That same month, a few dozen kilometers away, fighters from the same group executed 30 civilians in Bossieye and Alfaga Daweyzé Koira in reprisal for refusing to pay the zakat or on suspicion of collaborating with the army — Human Rights Watch calls this too an apparent war crime.
Who receives what, from whom. On May 26, 2026, the US embassy in Niamey delivered to the very same Nigerien armed forces — those of the junta responsible for January's bombing — a non-lethal shipment with a declared value of about $2.3 million: uniforms, protective equipment, and medical supplies, explicitly intended to «strengthen the country's capacity to fight extremist groups». Italy, through its bilateral MISIN mission, has a structurally larger commitment underway for 2025-2026: up to 550 authorized Italian troops and a budget of €75.1 million (a figure covering the broader West Africa mission of which Niger is the focus), 23 land vehicles and 5 aircraft, with stated tasks of training — including paramedic training — and border capacity-building against terrorism and trafficking. On June 3, 2026, Human Rights Watch documented that both programs are continuing without any verifiable conditions tied to January's events, and called for the application of the Leahy Laws — the US legislation that bars assistance to foreign military units responsible for gross human rights violations — alongside an independent investigation into the bombing. The following month Niger announced its withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, together with Mali and Burkina Faso; Chad would follow in July.
Other interests at stake
Neither cooperation program has so far been sanctioned or suspended over the documented violations, and there are stated reasons — not necessarily sufficient to justify it — why Washington and Rome have an interest in not breaking ties. For the United States, a specific dispute weighs heavily: roughly 1,000 tons of uranium belonging to the French company Orano have been stranded since 2025 at Niamey airport, after the junta nationalized the Somair mine (June 2025) and an international arbitration tribunal barred the sale or transfer of the material. An Atlantic Council analysis (March 2026) describes this crisis as an opening for US-Niger rapprochement, tied to three stated interests: securing nuclear material, containing Russian influence (Africa Corps) in the Sahel, and the legacy of the $110 million Agadez drone base, closed in the 2024 US withdrawal but not forgotten. For Italy the quid pro quo is not energy but migration, and it is documented from the very origin of the engagement: the Italian government requested sending a contingent to Niger as early as December 2016 (470 troops), with the stated goal of stabilizing the main transit country toward Italy's shores. The defense cooperation agreement was signed on September 26, 2017 — and the government refused for years to publish it in full, treating it as a «political act» exempt from transparency, until the Lazio Regional Administrative Court (TAR) forced its disclosure (November 27, 2018). In that same case the government claimed, as a result of the cooperation, a collapse in migrant transits from Niger to Libya, from 291,912 people in 2016 to about 10,000 by mid-2018, attributed to «funded projects» and «good cooperation» with Nigerien authorities. Today roughly 350 Carabinieri remain in Niger — a corps combining military and police functions, useful precisely for territorial control — while France, the United States, and the UN have been expelled from the country: a July 2026 geopolitical analysis (Ohio State University) notes that the absence of a colonial past comparable to France's or the US's leaves Italy negotiating room other Western actors have lost. One point remains uncovered, worth noting rather than passing over: Niger's 2015-036 law criminalizing migrant smuggling — the legal framework the entire cooperation rested on — was repealed by the junta in November 2023, and Italian cooperation continued regardless.
Legal commentary
Withdrawal from the Rome Statute does not erase the Court's jurisdiction over crimes committed while Niger was a member: the Kokoloko strike remains, in theory, prosecutable. But the withdrawal comes precisely while this type of episode — exactly what that jurisdiction is meant to judge — is pending, and signals an intent not to answer to any future inquiry. An attack that fails to distinguish between combatants and civilians in a crowded place violates the principle of distinction under customary international humanitarian law, which applies to non-international conflicts as well; individual criminal responsibility would follow whoever ordered or carried out the strike, not the state as such.
On the side of those supplying weapons and assistance, Italy — a State Party to the Arms Trade Treaty and bound by EU Common Position 2008/944/CFSP — has an obligation to assess risk before authorizing or continuing transfers to states for which credible evidence of grave violations of humanitarian law exists: an obligation of conduct, not of result, but one that the mere continuation of relations, without a published assessment, does not appear to satisfy. The United States is not a party to the treaty, but Human Rights Watch itself invokes an equivalent instrument of US domestic law, the Leahy Laws — whose application, by its own admission, it is asking to be strengthened.
Implications — the symmetry test
Here too the test is clean almost by construction, and within the same month: the Islamic State in the Sahel executes civilians in reprisal, the regular army kills others in an indiscriminate strike, and Human Rights Watch applies the same language to both sides — «apparent war crimes» — without mitigation for either. The third element, sharper here than in the Burkina Faso case, is the role of those arming and training: not only does the junta refuse accountability, but the United States and Italy choose not to condition their assistance on any verifiable terms, while the investigation into the apparent war crime remains open.
Related news: Burkina Faso leaves the International Criminal Court while remaining the world's country most affected by terrorism — the same Rome Statute withdrawal, a year later, with a concrete apparent-war-crime episode in place of a statistic alone.
Sources: Human Rights Watch — Kokoloko drone strike · JURIST · Human Rights Watch — IS Sahel massacres · Human Rights Watch — US/Italy military cooperation · US Embassy Niamey — official announcement (verified via secondary sources, see note) · Analisi Difesa — MISIN 2025 figures · Atlantic Council — uranium crisis and US rapprochement · Altreconomia — Italy-Niger agreement disclosed by TAR Lazio · Ohio State University — why the Carabinieri remain in Niger · ICC — statement on withdrawal
Verification note: the US embassy announcement was not directly reachable (403 error); the cited content is confirmed by cross-checking two outlets that reported it (Shabelle Media, Newsmax) plus HRW's own citation of it. The Italian figure (550 troops, €75.1 million) is the amount authorized for 2025 under the West Africa mission framework — no separate 2026 breakdown was found; to be verified once the new missions decree is issued.