The International Criminal Court (ICC), which Hungary on Thursday said it would quit, seeks to investigate and try the world's biggest atrocities.
Here are five things to know about the court based in the Dutch city of The Hague, which has made only 11 convictions since being set up 23 years ago.
- US, Russia among big absentees -
A total of 125 countries have ratified the court's founding Rome Statute, meaning they recognise its jurisdiction.
It was set up in 2002 to try alleged cases of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and, since 2017, crimes of aggression, when member states are unable or unwilling to do so.
The last to join on January 1, 2025, was Ukraine.
Hungary, which defied an ICC arrest warrant on Thursday by hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and announced its intention to start the year-long withdrawal process, had ratified the Rome Statute in 2001.
The United States and Russia are not members, nor are Israel, China and Myanmar.
But the ICC can prosecute their citizens for alleged crimes committed on the territory of a State Party or a non-member country recognising its jurisdiction.
The UN Security Council can also call on the court to investigate potentially serious international crimes, as for instance in Libya and Sudan's Darfur region.
- Eleven convictions -
The ICC does not have its own police force and its investigations take a long time.
It has so far brought in 11 convictions, all in Africa.
They include former militia leaders from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Thomas Lubanga, Germain Katanga and Bosco Ntaganda, who received the longest jail sentence of 30 years.
The last conviction, in November 2024, was a 10-year prison sentence for a Malian jihadist, "Al Hassan".
- Failures and fugitives -
The court has been weakened by a string of setbacks and spectacular acquittals.
Cases against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and his vice president William Ruto over post-election violence in 2007-8 collapsed in 2014 and 2016.
The four acquittals announced to date include former DRC vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba on appeal over crimes in the Central African Republic, and Ivory Coast's former president Laurent Gbagbo.
Former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir has been on the ICC's wanted list for genocide and crimes against humanity in the western province of Darfur for more than a decade.
Arrested by the Sudanese army in 2019, he has still not been handed over.
The son of former Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, Seif al-Islam Kadhafi, also remains out of the court's reach.
- Arrest warrants against Putin, Netanyahu -
Out of some 60 arrest warrants delivered since 2002 by the ICC only 22 have been executed.
The most recent involved former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who was arrested in March and charged with crimes against humanity over his deadly war on drugs.
He is being detained in The Hague.
In March 2023, the court announced an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin is accused of war crimes for the alleged illegal deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children since the Russian invasion in February 2022.
ICC member Mongolia however warmly hosted Putin in September 2024 and did not arrest him.
And on Thursday Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban welcomed in Budapest his Israeli counterpart Netanyahu, whom the ICC has accused of war crimes in Gaza.
- Dispute with Trump -
The ICC infuriated US president Donald Trump's first term administration in 2020 by authorising an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity by US forces serving in Afghanistan from 2003.
After the Taliban takeover, the court's new Prosecutor Karim Khan relaunched the investigation and asked that it focus on violence by the Taliban and the Islamic State.
Trump decided in February 2025 to impose sanctions on ICC officials, as he had already done during his first term.
