Armenia offered Russia an agreement to circumvent the requirements of the Rome Statute

Several months ago, the Armenian authorities invited Russia to sign an agreement that would allow circumventing the requirements of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), said Deputy Speaker of the Republic’s Parliament Hakob Arshakyan.

The agreement proposed by Yerevan under the Rome Statute became known in September, but its details were not disclosed.

“Several months before the ratification of the Rome Statute, we invited Russia to sign a bilateral agreement so that our interstate legal relations would not be subject to scrutiny in international structures <...> Legally, we can have an agreement that excludes the application of decisions of an international court on issues relating to the two countries,” he said (quote according to TASS).

Arshakyan added that Russia essentially did not give an answer, but there is still a lot of time before the statute comes into force on the territory of Armenia.

Armenia signed the Rome Statute in 1998, but has not ratified it. In 2004, the Constitutional Court of the republic recognized the obligations of the treaty as contrary to a number of provisions of the 1995 Constitution. The Government of Armenia appealed to the Constitutional Court with a request to retroactively recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC from May 2021 back in December 2022 – according to the Armenian authorities, this will allow calling on Azerbaijan to “responsibility for war crimes.”

Pashinyan said on September 24 that the ratification of the Rome Statute was a consequence of the fact that “the CSTO and the instruments of the Armenian-Russian strategic partnership are not enough to ensure external security.” At the same time, Yerevan tried to assure Moscow that ratification was not directed against its top officials. The decision of the Armenian parliament to ratify the Rome Statute was called incorrect in the Kremlin.

On October 3, 2023, the Armenian parliament ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC, and on October 14, the document was signed by the President of the Republic Vahagn Khachaturian.