From midnight on Thursday 1 February, i.e. from 10 pm on 31 January for Western Europe, Armenia officially became a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the main international tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The small country in the Caucasus region had ratified its accession to the Rome Statute, the international treaty establishing the Court, in October. Article 126 of the Statute predicts that the country officially becomes a member “on the first day of the month after the sixtieth day following the date” of ratification. Armenia thus became the 124th country to recognize the Court.
The Armenian government’s decision was interpreted as distancing itself from Russia, Armenia’s historic ally: in March 2023, in fact, the Court had issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, accusing him of war crimes in Ukraine. By joining the Court, the Armenian authorities have theoretically committed to arrest the Russian president if he enters Armenian territory. In October, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, he had defined Armenia’s decision was “inappropriate from the point of view of our bilateral relations.”
The Armenian authorities maintain that the accession is mainly due to the desire to prosecute the alleged war crimes committed by Azerbaijan in Nagorno Karabakh, the now former separatist state which is located on Azerbaijani territory but which until recently was mainly inhabited by people of Armenian ethnicity.