From the news desk

African leaders seeking impunity from ICC: Expert

Share this article

The calls for African states to withdraw as signatories of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court should not be seen as an attempt to counter a perceived bias against Africa, but rather to continue the notions of impunity, according to a prominent law expert.

The issue of Africa’s relations with the ICC has come to the fore over the past week, fueled by events at the 25th African Union (AU) Summit where South Africa faced accusations of turning a blind eye to an ICC issued warrant against Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir. The country’s failure in acting upon the warrant, and according to some reports even assisting al-Bashir to leave the country, has brought about questions as to whether it will seek to withdraw support for the court.

Any such move is likely to provoke a mass withdrawal amongst African states, in favour of a more African orientated tribunal.

Professor Jeremy Sarkin of the Department of Public, Constitutional & International Law at Unisa, noted that much of the opposition to the ICC was based on an argument that the court was diverting most of its focus against African countries and leaders.

“For me that is problematic because many of the cases the ICC has were dependent upon those states asking the ICC to take the cases on board. I don’t think it’s fair to say the ICC took these cases because it only wanted African cases. It has looked at others and for a range of reasons it has decided it has no jurisdiction over them,” he said.

In addition, the view was that even if there was some form of African bias, this did little to quell suggestions of gross human rights violations across the continent.

“We must see this for what it is; an attempt to continue the notions of impunity, and to continue not prosecuting people in Africa who have committed violations,” he stressed.

With regards to South Africa’s role, Sarkin said the country had long worked to avoid making any decisions on its support for the ICC, essentially walking a tight-rope between commitment to international justice with Europe and the West, and its leanings towards BRICS and the AU.

“South African does not want to be seen as taking one particular side. The matter of President al-Bashir certainly pushes it into a corner in terms of people now saying that they (now) know where South Africa stands, and it can’t anymore pretend to be on one side but at the same time the other,” he explained, simply suggesting that the country was being pushed to make a decision for or against the ICC.

South Africa’s own argument was that there could be co-existence between the ICC and a new African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which would seek to have more criminal jurisdiction than the one currently in operation.

Whilst South Africa has yet to clarify its stance on the matter, Sarkin reiterated that recent events would likely push the country, as well as other African states into making a decision to abandon the ICC in favour of an African institution. VOC (Mubeen Banderker)


Share this article

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

WhatsApp WhatsApp us
Wait a sec, saving restore vars.