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Adios ‘International Caucasian Court’

By sheer innuendo, The Gambia- a small West African country – has just told the world about what is wrong about the International Criminal Court. Announcing Gambia’s withdrawal from the court last week, Gambia parodied the ICC as an “International Caucasian Court’’ for the persecution and humiliation of people of colour, especially Africans.Gambia becomes the third African country to announce withdrawal from the ICC following South Africa a few days ago and Burundi weeks earlier. The actions by Gambia, and even more significantly by South Africa, have brought into sharp focus the status, legality and desirability of the ICC, which came about through the Rome Statute of 1998.

The ICC, according to the Rome Statute, was billed to be “an independent permanent International Criminal Court in relationship with the United Nations system, with jurisdiction over the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole” and to prosecute crimes named as follows: (a) the crime of genocide; (b) crimes against humanity; (c) war crimes; (d) the crime of aggression.

It is quite a huge surprise that Africans, who constitute nine of the 10 investigations opened by the ICC since the court was set up in 2002, appear to be the special criminals for which it was set up.

That is obviously an insult to the intelligence of not only Africans but humanity at large. Many parts of the world have experienced the above named crimes but war criminals such as Tony Blair and George W. Bush, former British prime minister and US President, respectively, have been allowed to walk scot-free when their war in Iraq implicates them in about every genus of crimes that ICC purportedly seeks to prosecute.

That is unacceptable and the trend in the last few weeks as African countries pulled out of ICC is justified and long overdue. In fact, African countries must now move out of the ICC in toto to give exp0ression to long held misgivings about this kangaroo court. This will only show seriousness regarding how the continent wishes to be treated at international forums and in global affairs.

It is critical to note that Africa has long been demanding the reform of the United Nations and in particular the reconfiguration of the United Nations Security Council.

Africa, it has been demanded, requires at least one permanent seat on the Security Council.

This and other calls such as the reform of multilateral organisations such as World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have gone unheeded despite the fact that they are grounded in logic that ranges from demographics to geopolitics.

Africa is an important global player.

That, though, seems not to be the idea of the other members of the international community. For all its demands, Africa is given the special attention of the ICC, albeit as war criminals before the court. That is not only disdainful for a continent of 54 countries and over one billion people; it is also patently racist where African leaders are now being treated as some species of delinquent children.

The ICC, as its short chequered history has shown, has been used as a political stick with which to beat Africa in the hands of Western countries some of whom are not even parties to the Rome Statute.

That is unacceptable.

In this regard, we support the idea of a complete pullout by African countries and the setting up of local mechanisms to deal with genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression. There already has been a proposal for such a mechanism and we hope that a proper African court can be instituted and do itself a favour of bringing to book culprits.

The idea of pulling out should not been a licence to impunity — and this has been a special concern of those against the pull out. On the contrary, Africa must demonstrate that it abhors the grievous crimes named above and is ready to bring a halt to such — along of course with the scourge of wars that are typically identified with the continent.

Africa has had vibrant justice systems, along with other traditional mechanisms, from long back and certainly no European or American needs to teach Africans anything, least of all fundamentals regarding humanity, justice or statecraft.

The continent must now unite and pull out from the ICC to send a clear message about its displeasure with the dishonourable and racist court as well as the larger story about reforms at the UN and international financial architecture.