South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) said on Thursday that a petition filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC) over xenophobic violence in the country does not meet the legal threshold required for the court to act.

The petition, submitted to the ICC's Office of the Prosecutor on July 15, was filed by two Ghanaian nationals, according to media reports.

It called on the court to open a preliminary examination into a "pattern of widespread and systematic attacks" against foreign nationals in South Africa, arguing the violence could amount to crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute.

The petitioners also asked the court to examine whether senior South African officials, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, bore responsibility for failing to prevent or punish the attacks.

DIRCO said the filing failed to satisfy the "statutory legal triggers and jurisdictional requirements necessary for action by the Court."

It added that under the principle of complementarity, South Africa retained full confidence in its domestic legal system, pointing to the Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Act, which it said gives effect to the country's constitutional and international obligations on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance by criminalizing hate crimes and hate speech.

South Africa has faced a wave of anti-immigrant protests since earlier this year, led by groups including Operation Dudula and March and March, which set a June 30 deadline for undocumented migrants to leave the country.

More than 160,000 foreign nationals are estimated to have left South Africa over the past two months, according to figures from repatriating governments, with Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria and Ghana among the countries that have organized return transport for their citizens.

The current violence is widely described as the largest anti-migrant mobilization in South Africa since 2008, when nationwide attacks killed 62 people.

South Africa's statement was issued following the final communique of the 69th Ordinary Session of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government held last week.

In a section on the attacks, the bloc's heads of state and government said they noted the ongoing attacks in South Africa targeting people of African descent, particularly West African citizens, with deep concern, and expressed strong condemnation of what they called a recurrent phenomenon.

The authority also urged South African authorities to address the situation and find a permanent solution, while ensuring the safety of West African and other African nationals in the country.

South Africa said it regarded ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, as a vital pillar of continental integration and remained committed, in a spirit of Pan-African solidarity, to dialogue with ECOWAS member states on regional stability and migration.

The country's Foreign Minister, Ronald Lamola, said he welcomed engaging on migration at the AU heads of state level, so that migration across the continent becomes a choice rather than a necessity, and called for a dedicated AU agenda item on the root causes of irregular migration.