On 13 July, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a major policy speech in which he vowed to dismantle the International Criminal Court (ICC), one of the cornerstones of international justice, “brick by brick”.
“The US is launching a diplomatic campaign with a simple message – sovereign states over globalism. Those who benefit from American security must not stand idly by while those who provide that security are targeted,” he wrote the following day in an op-ed piece. The statement was directed, amongst others, at the Latin American governments that form part of his new geopolitical alliance, the Shield of the Americas, designed to tackle organised crime and dissuade countries from doing business with China.
In the two months since then, the diplomatic campaign announced by Rubio landed strongly in the region. Through a strategy combining public appeals, high-level visits and diplomatic lobbying, Donald Trump’s administration has been pressuring Latin American countries with right-wing governments to withdraw from the Court and the Rome Statute, which is its founding treaty.
So far, the strategy has had mixed results. The sole country announcing its withdrawal was Venezuela, which has been the subject of an ongoing investigation by the ICC Prosecutor’s Office into possible crimes against humanity since 2022, and the Trump administration has wielded enormous influence there since it ousted dictator Nicolás Maduro. Chile and Costa Rica have publicly ruled out following suit, whilst other countries have subtly adopted Rubio’s narrative or remained silent.
Hegseth steps up the pressure
A month after Rubio’s speech, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth resumed the pressure initiated by his cabinet colleague. During a forum on 12 August in Panama City organised by the Shield of the Americas, he “strongly encouraged” the alliance’s members to “leave the ICC, and reject their attempts to rob your governments and your courts of your sovereignty”. Hegseth’s argument was that the Court could also investigate joint operations carried out by the United States with Latin American governments against organised crime, which he described as “100 percent lawful under the laws of armed conflict”.
Several operations led by US troops have already raised alarm bells. Air strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific have left 234 people dead in extrajudicial killings in which, contrary to Hegseth’s argument, the conditions for the existence of an armed conflict are not met. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, characterised them as such and pointed out that they violate international human rights law. An investigation led by the Latin American Centre for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) revealed that 19 of the victims were poor coastal dwellers who were struggling to support their families as best they could and who were denied the right to a defence.
The curious case of Venezuela
Venezuela, the only country so far to have satisfied the Trump government’s expectations and announced its withdrawal from the ICC or from the Rome Statute on which it is based, is a special case: it has been governed for almost three decades by the same political party, and its government has been under investigation by the ICC Prosecutor’s Office since 2021 for possible crimes against humanity, including arbitrary detentions, torture and other widespread abuses that occurred during the state repression in 2014 and 2017. After eight years of preliminary examination and five years of investigation, the case has not resulted in any charges and was affected by former Prosecutor Karim Khan’s decision to trust the Chavista regime to investigate and punish those crimes (in accordance with the principle of complementarity) – something it failed to do – as well as by the sexual harassment affair that eventually cost Khan his job last July.
Ultimately, President Maduro was arrested by US forces on 3 January, after which his then-deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, assumed power. Under the new interim government, changes have taken place, such as the release of more than 900 political prisoners and the lifting of censorship on independent media, although many reforms necessary for a transition to democracy remain pending.
On 24 July, Foreign Minister Félix Plasencia announced the country’s withdrawal from the ICC, attributing it to an order from Rodríguez and citing a “demonstrated geographical bias” that is “detrimental to the Global South”. That decision, which will take effect in a year’s time, did, however, have a precedent from the Maduro era: in December 2025, the pro-government National Assembly had passed a law endorsing a withdrawal from the ICC. Maduro was arrested just three weeks later.
Curiously, the US State Department publicly welcomed Rodriguez’s decision, highlighting “the new Venezuelan government’s partnership on American-led efforts to dismantle the corrupt and worthless ICC”. It accused the international court of investigating Maduro “since 2018 with no result”, whilst the Trump administration was already bringing him to justice. It made no mention of the fact that the charges brought against him by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York include narco-terrorism, drug trafficking and the use of weapons, but none relating to the serious human rights violations in the country.
From showing muscles to making political calculations
The first Latin American official to publicly rule out the option of withdrawing from the Court was the Chilean Foreign Minister, Francisco Pérez Mackenna, at a press conference on 14 August. “We are members of the International Criminal Court and, whilst all organisations have room for improvement, we remain members of the ICC,” he said, without giving further details but amidst a major national public debate on the pros and cons of joining Washington’s initiative.
His Costa Rican counterpart followed suit a week later. “Costa Rica reaffirms its support for the International Criminal Court,” said Manuel Tovar. He, too, gave no details, although he was dismissed a few days ago by President Laura Fernández for failing to notify her of a meeting with the US government.
Ecuador has made no announcement, but eight days after Rubio’s visit to Quito to consolidate a regional security agenda, President Daniel Noboa lambasted the international court in a radio interview. “Certain global institutions are becoming ideologised and no longer deal with issues objectively. For example, the International Criminal Court has already become far too ideologically driven. Rather than being impartial institutions, they are becoming tools for certain factions to launch attacks,” he said, echoing the Trump administration’s stance but without elaborating further.
Current diplomatic priorities may have played a part in the calculations of two of these countries. Costa Rica is leading the bid for its former vice-president and former minister, Rebeca Grynspan, to succeed António Guterres as Secretary-General of the United Nations. In that election, she has already topped one of the straw polls in the Security Council, with her closest rival being the former Guyanese minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett.
Ecuador is backing its ambassador, Marcelo Vázquez-Bermúdez, to win a seat as a judge at the International Court of Justice, based like the ICC in The Hague. In addition, Ecuadorian jurist Osvaldo Zavala, currently the ICC's registrar, met last month with Interior Minister John Reimberg. He also wrote an op-ed column defending the Rome Statute and warning that “certain states that are not parties to it are seeking to dismantle the system by redefining the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court as a challenge to sovereignty.” In reality, Zavala argued, “the stability of a state governed by the rule of law is measured by its ability to remain within the framework of international law.”
Colombia withdraws its candidate for ICC judge
Apart from those three, there are around ten countries that currently have right-wing governments and are part of the Shield of the Americas (also known as the Anti-Cartel Coalition of the Americas or A3C).
In Colombia, Abelardo de la Espriella’s new government has made no statement regarding the ICC, although a recent decision suggests that pressure from Washington may be working. A week after Rubio’s visit to Barranquilla, in Northern Colombia, the government withdrew the candidacy of the lawyer and former ambassador Carolina Olarte-Bácares for the position of judge at the ICC, despite her being the only nominee from Latin America and the Caribbean and having been assessed as ‘highly qualified’ by the advisory committee. The decision also came as a surprise because senior officials of the incoming administration had assured her that they would support her nomination, although the government has also withdrawn other nominations of public officials who served in the governments of Juan Manuel Santos or Gustavo Petro (for whom Olarte-Bácares served as ambassador in The Hague).
The positions on the ICC held by members of the current government have varied. Whilst Foreign Secretary Omar Bula has for years insisted that the Court is allegedly under the influence of US financier and philanthropist George Soros – a frequent target of conspiracy theories from the far right linked to Trump – Legal Secretary Andrés Barreto stood as a candidate for a seat on the ICC in 2020, and De la Espriella himself cited the Rome Statute in the book on transitional justice that he self-published a decade ago.
Any decision by the Colombian government to withdraw from the international court could backfire. It could end up favouring the former leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), for whom the De la Espriella government says it wants harsher sentences than those they have received under transitional justice. In reality, the ICC is one of the main sources of pressure ensuring that the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) – the judicial arm of Colombia’s transitional system – does indeed comply with the retributive component of its sanctions, as stipulated in the 2016 peace agreement. This is because, when the Court concluded its 17-year preliminary examination of the country and endorsed its transitional model, it stated that it would continue to monitor compliance with the sanctions and could, in theory, reopen the investigation.
Pressure from Israel, silence from the rest
In any case, pressure is also coming from other quarters. At a meeting last week in New York, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who has been charged by the ICC Prosecutor’s Office with allegedly committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza – urged the presidents of Bolivia, Panama and Paraguay to withdraw from the court. Neither they nor their governments have publicly stated their position. Nor has Argentina, whose president, Javier Milei, has been critical of the ICC Prosecutor’s Office’s slowness in the Venezuela case.
Two persons who follow international justice consulted by Justice Info relayed information they received secondhand that the Trump administration was planning to organise an event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York to potentially announce the withdrawal of several countries from the ICC. The event ultimately did not take place. A diplomatic source told Justice Info that there had been expectations that in Trump's speech full sanctions would be declared on the court, accompanied with a number of countries making withdrawal declarations. But – potentially – with the latter not happening, the former didn’t’ either.
The coming weeks will reveal just how effective the pressure from Rubio, Hegseth and Washington is in Latin American capitals. The results of the presidential election in Brazil in October and the mid-term congressional elections in the United States could help determine whether the region joins in undermining the Court.
