LatinNews Daily - 03 August 2026

Venezuela: On 25 July the US Department of State (DoS) said that it welcomed the decision announced the previous day by Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez to withdraw Venezuela from the International Criminal Court (ICC) and “the new Venezuelan government’s partnership on American-led efforts to dismantle the corrupt and worthless ICC”. On 13 July US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a “sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed” by the ICC to US sovereignty, describing it as an “unaccountable global arbiter”. He said that actions under consideration include, among other things, “diplomatic calls from the Secretary of State, Deputy Secretary, ambassadors, and other members of senior leadership to foreign nations highlighting the abuses of the ICC and the risks posed to Americans and other nations urging them to withdraw from the ICC”. The 25 July DoS statement said the ICC has been “investigating” [Venezuela’s former president] Nicolas Maduro [2013-2026] since 2018 with no result”, adding that the ICC “has instead wasted its resources on investigating and charging persons from countries that have competent, independent judicial systems and which never submitted to the jurisdiction of the court”. The DoS described this as “blatant overreach, political bias and selective enforcement”. Claiming that Maduro is “now facing justice in a U.S. court for crimes he has committed”, the DoS says that “it is time to dismantle the ICC” and the US calls “on all members of the ICC to withdraw from the Rome Statute” [which founded the ICC, and to which the US is not a state party]. 

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