On February the 5th, 2014, the president of
Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, will go on trial at the International Criminal
Court (ICC) for crimes relating to the 2007 post-election violence in
Kenya. In the aftermath of the ethnically motivated violence, about
1,200 people lost their lives and the families of most of the victims
are still crying for justice.
Accused of orchestrating the violence, Kenyatta and his deputy,
William Ruto, are facing charges of crimes against humanity. As
expected, this has not gone down well with most African leaders and the
African Union (AU). The leaders, last week failed in an attempt to get
the UN Security Council to defer Kenyatta's trial by a year. Despite the
fact that a number of African countries are signatories to the Rome
Statute, recent happenings are forcing them to have a rethink. At the AU
extraordinary summit held in Ethiopia last month, some African
countries, on the insistence of Kenya, pushed to have the AU withdraw
from the Rome Statute. It took the intervention of President Goodluck
Jonathan, South Africa's Jacob Zuma and a few other presidents to
prevent that path from being taken. With this failure, the AU is now
pushing for an amendment of the said statute, to give immunity to
sitting heads of state from prosecution.
This amounts to moving the goalpost in the middle of a game. Africans
have consistently accused the ICC of prosecuting only leaders from the
continent. What nobody should lose sight of, however, is the fact that
the ICC only intervenes in countries where there is an absence of
justice. In any given country, it will not act, if a case is
investigated or prosecuted by that country's justice system. We observe,
sadly, that in the 21st century, it is only in Africa that crimes are
committed on a large scale with no discernable effort to bring culprits
to book.
Even more unfortunate, in our opinion, is the fact the ICC now has to
defend itself against insinuations that it is persecuting African
leaders. For months now, the ICC has been going out of its way to
assuage these fears and is going as far as campaigning to stop member
countries in the continent from withdrawing from the Rome Statute. It is
no accident that the court even appointed an African, Fatou Bensouda,
as its chief prosecutor. Two weeks ago, President Jonathan had to make a
public declaration to the ICC president, Sang Hyung Song, that Nigeria
had no intention of withdrawing from the court's jurisdiction.
It is our opinion that as long as judicial systems in Africa remain
weak and politicians carry on as if they are above the law, the ICC
should be an option for people in need of justice. The interests of
African leaders and those of its people are not always the same. Cases
arise where the people need to be protected from their leaders. It will
be in the interest of President Kenyatta and the over 1,000 victims of
the 2007/2008 violence that he clears his name at The Hague. The AU
should also shelve the idea of demanding an amendment of the Rome
Statute. It makes some sense to give sitting heads of state and
presidents immunity from criminal prosecution, but not when these crimes
relate to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
AllAfrica
AllAfrica
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