Maravi

(TALKZIMBABWE) African countries should not join the ICC

African countries should not join the ICC
By: By David Hoile
Posted: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 3:52 am

LAST week in Kampala, Uganda, State members of the International Criminal Court began their first ever review conference of the court since its establishment in 2002. There is certainly a case for examining the activities of the ICC over the past eight years.

When the Assembly of States, those states that have signed up to the ICC statute binding them to its jurisdiction, met in Kampala there was a lot they should have been worried about, not least of which the fact that the ICC has proved to be unfit for its mandate.

The ICC’s claims to international jurisdiction and judicial independence are institutionally flawed and the court’s approach has been marred by blatant double standards and serious irregularities.

The Hague-based ICC is increasingly being seen as the European equivalent of the US tribunal at Guantanamo Bay.

While it presents itself as an international court, this is quite simply not the case.

Its members represent just over one quarter of the world’s population: China, Russia, the US, India, Pakistan and Indonesia are just some of the many countries that have remained outside of the court’s jurisdiction.

The truth is also that the ICC is as independent as the United Nations Security Council and the court’s European Union funding lets it be.

Far from being independent and impartial, the ICC’s own statute grants special "prosecutorial:" rights of referral and deferral to the Security Council.

Political interference in the legal process was thus made part of the court’s founding terms of reference.

The court is also umbilically tied to the European Union, which provides over 60 per cent of its funding. The expression, "he who pays the piper calls the tune," could not be more accurate.

The ICC has ignored all European or Western human rights abuses in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq or human rights abuses by Western client states. Instead, the Europeans have chosen to focus the court exclusively on Africa.

Despite over 8 000 complaints about alleged crimes in at least 139 countries, the ICC has started investigations into just five countries, all of them African.

Given Africa’s previous traumatic experience with the very same colonial powers that now direct the ICC, this must create an alarming sense of deja vu for those who live on the continent.

The European Union is additionally guilty of economic blackmail in tying aid for developing countries to ICC membership, while at the same time criticising Washington for tying aid to bilateral immunity deals with countries that were members of the ICC.

The court’s proceedings have often been questionable if not farcical. Its judges, some of whom have never been lawyers, let alone judges, are appointed as the result of vote trading among member states.

The court has produced witnesses who recanted their testimony the moment they got into the witness box, admitting that they were coached by non-governmental organisations as to what false statements to make.

There have been prosecutorial decisions, which should have ended any fair trial because they compromised the integrity of any subsequent process.

The ICC’s first trial stalled because of judicial decisions to add new charges halfway through proceedings.

Simply put, the court has been making things up as it goes along.

The ICC claims to be victim-centred, yet Human Rights Watch has publicly criticised its ambivalence towards victim communities. It claims to bring "swift justice", but it has taken several years to bring the first accused to trial for allegedly using child soldiers.

The Nuremberg trials, which addressed infinitely more serious charges, were over within a year.

The ICC claims to be fighting impunity, yet it has afforded de facto immunity and impunity to several serial abusers of human rights who happen to be friends of the European Union and the US.

Africa fought long and hard for its independence. It must reject this new "legal" colonialism. The ICC’s double standards and autistic legal blundering in Africa has derailed delicate peace processes, thereby prolonging devastating civil wars.

There is a clear lesson for countries in Africa and elsewhere: do not join the ICC and do not refer your country to the ICC.

The ICC does not have Africa’s welfare at heart, only the furtherance of Western, especially European, foreign policy, and its own bureaucratic imperative to exist, to employ more Europeans and North Americans, and where possible, to continue to increase its budget.

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Dr Hoile, an African scholar and consultant, is the author of The International Criminal Court: Europe’s Guantanamo Bay. This article is reproduced from The Daily Nation on the Web.

Labels: INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT, NEOCOLONIALISM

posted by MrK @ 5:00 PM