Prosecuting International Crimes in Africa - PULP - University of ...

Politics of international criminal justice 149
their counterparts in other parts of the world. Their objective was to stir the
conscience of world governments towards agreement on contentious
issues and so paving the way for the Court’s establishment. 12 While the
stated preferences of the individual advocacy groups were not met to the
letter, the end product of the negotiations was a more robust instrument
than even the ICC’s strongest supporters could sensibly have hoped for. 13
With the adoption of the Rome Statute, the Coalition quickly transformed
itself into an effective global campaign for swift achievement of the 60
ratifications required for it to enter into force. Their efforts enabled the
entry into force of the Statute in July 2002, much sooner and more
dramatically than could have been reasonably anticipated. 14 Even after its
entry into force, the Coalition continued to support the work of the
Preparatory Commission to assist in developing important ancillary legal
instruments, for example, the Court’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence
and the elements of crimes. 15
Today, African civil society appears to have entered a third phase of
advocacy whereby it leverages prior contacts within governments to not
only lobby for the remaining ratifications, but also adopt the necessary
legislation and domestic programmes to give effect to their Rome Statute
obligations. 16 On the whole, given the serious governance deficit on the
continent, local and international human rights NGOs played an
important role in sensitising political leaders to the potential benefits of a
strong court for Africa. Until last year, over a decade after the Rome
Statute was adopted, African countries, many of which are either
embroiled in conflicts of one sort or another or newly emergent from them,
had continued to invest their yearnings for peace and stability in the hope
that the ICC would become a success story and of benefit to them.
To illustrate this point, Africa is on record for having generated the
largest support base for the Court with at least 30 ratifying states, over half
of the continent’s 53 countries with another thirteen countries having
signalled their support for the treaty through their signatures. 17 Indeed, of
the five cases presently before the Court, three of them are from Africa by
way of self referral, an indication of what was until recently the continent’s
wide embrace of the Court. 18 However, following the indictment of
Sudanese President Al Bashir for crimes against humanity and faced with
the possibility of a genocide case at a time when Sudan was on the eve of
12 As above.
13 Note by the UN Secretary-General ‘Non-governmental organizations accredited to
participate in the conference’ UN Doc A/CONF 183/INF/3 5 June 1998.
14 WA Schabas An Introduction to the International Criminal Court (2004) 19
15 Pace and Thieroff (n 11 above).
16 C Jalloh ‘Regionalising international criminal law’ (2009) 9 International Criminal Law
Review 445.
17 As above.
18 C Kress ‘Self-referrals’ and ‘waivers of complementarity’ (2004) 2 Journal of International
Criminal Justice 944 and P Gaeta ‘Is the practice of “self-referrals” a sound start for the
ICC?’ (2004) 2 Journal of International Criminal Justice 951.