{A few days to the 27th African Union Summit in Kigali Rwanda, a group of activists from across the region, have united to get African leaders to support the International Criminal Court (ICC)}
A few days to the 27th African Union Summit in Kigali Rwanda, a group of activists from across the region, have united to get African leaders to support the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The 21 African and international non-governmental organisations in a video which features 12 activists released on Thursday, want African governments to reconsider their views on the court when they meet from July 10 to July 18.
President Museveni is one of the African leaders leading the onslaught on the court which they (African leaders) accuse of “unfairly targeting Africa.”
President Museveni has severally attacked the court, including at his swearing in for a fifth elective term in office in May.
“To say that the ICC is targeting Africa, I think, is a misrepresentation of the situation,” says Angela Mudukuti of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre. “It’s more Africans making use of the court they helped to create.”
Ms Stella Ndirangu of the International Commission of Jurists, Kenya, says the reasons why Africa supported the establishment of the court have not changed.
“The only thing that has changed is that now leaders are being held to account.”
The move by some African leaders to reject the court pits them against the majority who want justice, according to Mr Ibrahim Tommy of the Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law, Sierra Leone.
“The big clash [these days] is over African leaders, the powerful few, who really want impunity for themselves, versus the vast majority, in fact all of the victims of Africa’s continent, who want justice every day,” he said.
In January 2016, the African Union (AU) gave its Open-Ended Committee of African Ministers on the ICC a mandate to develop a “comprehensive strategy” on the ICC, including considering the withdrawal of African member countries from the court. The committee met in April and agreed on three conditions that needed to be met by the ICC in order for the AU to agree not to call on African countries to withdraw from the court. These include a demand for immunity from ICC prosecution for sitting heads of state and other senior government officials. This is contrary to a fundamental principle of the court.
President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has had an ICC arrest warrant on him since 2009 for crimes he allegedly committed in Darfur.
It is not clear if the AU will consider any of the open-ended committee’s assessments and recommendations at the Kigali summit.
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