{{Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda are behind concerted efforts to lobby African countries to withdraw from the International Criminal Court at the African union summit in Addis Ababa, a Sudanese diplomat revealed.}}<\/p>\n
The AU is holding an extraordinary summit Friday to discuss the continent\u2019s future relationship with the Hague-based court amid calls from rights groups to reconsider the move.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe majority of the African leaders are insisting to vote for the withdrawal from the so-called ICC,\u201d Sudanese ambassador to Ethiopia, Mr Abdul-Rahman Siralkhatim, said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis summit will be a historic one for African leaders to put an end to this western hostile tool against Africa,\u201d the Ambassador said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe meeting will discuss issues of the appointment of a new chairman of the African Peace and Security Council and Africa’s relation with the International Criminal Court and its accusations against African leaders\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
ICC faces accusations from African leaders of targeting only Africans.<\/p>\n
The court currently has two high profile cases against Sudan\u2019s President Omar al-Bashir and Kenya\u2019s President Uhuru Kenyatta, including his deputy William Ruto.<\/p>\n
It is expected that the 34 African countries that are party to the Rome Statute will meet Friday to discuss possible withdrawal from the ICC.<\/p>\n
The AU has previously called on its members not to cooperate with the ICC, and has asked the UN Security Council to suspend the Kenyan and Sudanese cases.<\/p>\n
The AU has also asked the court to allow Libya to try its own citizens within its territory.<\/p>\n
NMG<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda are behind concerted efforts to lobby African countries to withdraw from the International Criminal Court at the African union summit in Addis Ababa, a Sudanese diplomat revealed.}} The AU is holding an extraordinary summit Friday to discuss the continent\u2019s future relationship with the Hague-based court amid calls from rights groups […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2000048734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-10875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000048734,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10875.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10875.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10875.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10875.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10875.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10875.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000048734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10875"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=10875"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=10875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}