Crossroads Asia | Diplomacy | Central Asia

Tajikistan Eyes ICC Exit

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........

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