On 16 September the council of the Majlisi Namoyandagon, the lower house, considered dozens of bills at an extraordinary sitting, and near the end of the list on the chamber’s site, between amendments on wildlife and a change to an agreement on atomic energy, stood a draft resolution “On ending the effect of the Statute of the International Criminal Court”. Tajikistan is the only Central Asian state that ratified the Rome Statute: Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan signed it and never ratified, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan never signed.
The press service wrote that “appropriate decisions” had been taken. On Thursday 1 October the chamber considered the draft in session and the press service used the same two words again, without publishing the decision, TASS reported. On 14 October Asia-Plus wrote that the chamber has voted to withdraw.
Tajikistan is the only Central Asian state that ratified the Rome Statute: Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan signed it and never ratified, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan never signed.
Tajikistan signed the statute on 30 November 1998, ratified it on 5 May 2000, the first post-Soviet state to do so by Azattyq Asia’s count, and became a party on 1 July 2002, when the treaty entered into force. For more than two decades The Hague raised no complaint against Dushanbe, Azattyq Asia wrote, and the first came in 2025.
The complaint came with a state visit. On 8 October 2025 Putin arrived in Dushanbe for the CIS summit and the Central Asia-Russia summit, under the warrant the court’s pre-trial chamber issued on 17 March 2023 on charges of the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children, and Emomali Rahmon received him at the airport.
On 5 November 2025 the pre-trial chamber asked Tajikistan to explain why it had not arrested him. Dushanbe answered that Russia is not a party to the statute, pointed to its bilateral agreements with Moscow on the immunity of senior officials, and said it did not regard its position as a refusal to cooperate with the court. The European Union’s external action service accused Tajikistan of failing its obligations under the statute, TASS recalled on 1 October.
By a court document Azattyq Asia read, Tajikistan had received the arrest request in 2023 and in September 2025, before the visit, notified The Hague that it could not execute it.
Under article 57 of Tajikistan’s constitution the ratification and denunciation of international treaties belong to the lower house, which acts by resolution, Faridun Saidzoda, an international-law specialist from Tajikistan who works in The Hague, told Azattyq Asia on 23 September. Neither the upper house nor the president’s signature is required for the denunciation of a ratified treaty, in his reading of the law on international treaties.
Under article 127 of the statute a state withdraws by written notification to the UN secretary-general, and the withdrawal takes effect one year after receipt. For that year Tajikistan remains a full party with every obligation the statute carries, including the one the court asked it about in November 2025.
Dushanbe has published no reasoned statement, and the two notices of the chamber’s press service say “appropriate decisions”. The one argument on the record is the answer to the court: Russia is not a party, and bilateral agreements grant its senior officials immunity.
Dilrabo Samadova, a lawyer, told Asia-Plus that the decision does not release Tajikistan from its previous obligations and could weaken a mechanism for holding those responsible for the gravest crimes to account. Hugh Williamson, Human Rights Watch’s director for Europe and Central Asia, told Radio Ozodi in September that withdrawal would be “an extremely negative step” that “will lead to the further isolation of the country”, and that it signals that the state has little interest in its own citizens’ rights.
The United States sanctioned the court itself on 9 October. The State Department designated the ICC under Executive Order 14203, having sanctioned 17 of its officials before, its fact sheet of that day says, and Treasury issued a 180-day general licence for the court’s maintenance, meant, in the State Department’s words, to give states parties time “to demonstrate meaningful progress on diplomatic and legal resolutions that address fundamental U.S. concerns regarding the ICC”. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will hold bilateral meetings with all five Central Asian governments in Samarkand between 17 and 22 October, the department said on 13 October.
Among the countries CAW covers, the court’s other parties are Georgia, a party since 2003, Armenia, which ratified in 2024, and Mongolia, which received Putin in September 2024 and kept its membership. Russia signed the statute in 2000, never ratified it, and withdrew its signature in November 2016.
The chamber has printed neither the date nor the text of the vote Asia-Plus reports. The statute’s year begins when the foreign ministry’s notification reaches New York.