Double Standards: Africa’s fractured relationship with ICC

Isaac Kaledzi

Since its inception 25 years ago, 33 African states have joined the ICC with Ivory Coast the most recent to do so in 2013. They were all expecting justice for victims of crimes. “I think that generally it has done well in its effort to provide some justice for victims in Africa,” Ghanaian legal expert Alhassan Yahaya Seini told DW. But what started as a good relationship between Africa and the ICC is now fractured. In recent years, some Africa countries have complained about unfair targeting. While the ICC seems to enjoy strong support among civil society groups in Africa, it’s a different story when it comes to some African leaders.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame for instance suggested that Africans have become the scapegoat in the ICC’s push to execute its mandate. “The ICC was supposed to address the whole world, but it ended up covering only Africa,” Kagame told British-Sudanese telecoms tycoon and philanthropist Mo Ibrahim in 2018.  “From the time of its inception, I said there was a fraud basis on which it was set up and how it was going to be used,” Kagame said. “I told people that this would be a court to try Africans, not people from across the world. And I don’t believe I have been proven wrong.” Magdalene Mutheu, a filmmaker from Kenya told DW that she thought Kagame’s position was justified.

“The court seems to have been designed to work against Africans and against African leaders,” she said. “There are so many leaders in the Western world who have committed crimes against humanity in different countries like Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and none of them have ever been taken to the International Criminal Court.” Legal scholar Seini though disagrees. “I wouldn’t say it is targeting Africa as such because it is not like ICC is looking out for African leaders,” Seini said “I don’t think anyone is saying that.”

About 30 cases before the ICC involve individuals from the Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Libya, Mali and Uganda. These countries invited the ICC prosecutor to investigate crimes allegedly committed in their territories. “It was the states themselves who went to court and not the other way around,” Mamadou Diallo, a public international law expert at Cheick Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal told DW. 

“From this point of view there is no problem. Because the crimes there have been in Africa, many in Africa and the states concerned have decided to refer the matter to the court, the court exercises its criminal jurisdiction.”

Seini agreed with Diallo that African leaders must stop playing victims when it comes to prosecution of cases. “If Africa did a lot more for itself and its citizens, the ICC would not be required for them. I’ve heard complaints about victimization of African leaders but quite often it is because the systems in the countries themselves have not provided avenues for the victims of injustice,” Seini said.

The ICC investigates whoever engages in conduct that violates the Rome Statute, the court’s founding treaty which grants jurisdiction over four main crimes — the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crime of aggression. Africa has experienced a lot of wars and conflicts over the past decades with often serious atrocities committed against civilians.