quality:corruption, linguistic:paraphrasing
African accusations of Western imperialism

The ICC has been accused of bias and as being a tool of Western imperialism, only punishing leaders from small, weak states while ignoring crimes committed by richer and more powerful states. This sentiment has been expressed particularly by African leaders due to an alleged disproportionate focus of the Court on Africa, while it claims to have a global mandate. Until January 2016, all nine situations which the ICC had been investigating were in African countries.

African critics have suggested the ICC is acting as a neo-colonial force seeking to further empower Western political and extractive interests in Africa.". Scholar Awol Allo has described the court's underlying problem that has led to these challenges with Africa as not overt racism, but Eurocentrism. Another analysis suggests that African states are motivated by concerns over Africa's place in world order: the problem is the sovereign inequality displayed by the ICC prosecutor's focus.

The prosecution of Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto and President Uhuru Kenyatta (both charged before coming into office) led to the Kenyan parliament passing a motion calling for Kenya's withdrawal from the ICC, and the country called on the other 33 African states party to the ICC to withdraw their support, an issue which was discussed at a special African Union (AU) summit in October 2013.

Though the ICC has denied the charge of disproportionately targeting African leaders, and claims to stand up for victims wherever they may be, Kenya was not alone in criticising the ICC. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir visited Kenya, South Africa, China, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia, Qatar and several other countries despite an outstanding ICC warrant for his arrest but was not arrested; he said that the charges against him are "exaggerated" and that the ICC was a part of a " Western plot" against him. Ivory Coast's government opted not to transfer former first lady Simone Gbagbo to the court but to instead try her at home. Rwanda's ambassador to the African Union, Joseph Nsengimana, argued that "It is not only the case of Kenya. We have seen international justice become more and more a political matter." Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni accused the ICC of "mishandling complex African issues". Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, at the time AU chairman, told the UN General Assembly at the General debate of the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly: "The manner in which the ICC has been operating has left a very bad impression in Africa. It is totally unacceptable."