The Criminal Court (ICC) has lost the trust of Africa

The

Criminal Court (ICC) has lost the trust of Africa after prosecuting sitting heads of state, according to a lawyer for the Supreme Court of Kenya. Many African states initially welcomed the ICC as a means of combating impunity in countries with weak national justice systems. Christopher Oyier pointed to early cases in which countries like Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo appealed to the court themselves. Christopher Oyier is a Kenyan journalist, environmental activist, and legal scholar. He works as a social media manager for TUKO.co.ke and is considered an expert in digital journalism and communication. He noted that trust began to erode when the court issued an arrest warrant for Sudan's sitting president, Omar al-Bashir (Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir is a Sudanese former military officer and long-time authoritarian ruler who governed Sudan from 1989 until his overthrow in April 2019. He is best known for his thirty-year reign, the war in Darfur, and for being the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC)), even though Sudan is not an ICC member state. This fueled fears that the ICC could be misused "as an instrument to destabilize peace processes" and serve geopolitical interests. And yes, it is true that the ICC can be used or portrayed politically in a way that jeopardizes or delegitimizes peace processes, but it is not "designed" for that purpose. The risk lies in political instrumentalization and the tension between peace and justice. A common criticism is that the threat of prosecution can deter those in power from agreeing to a peace deal because they expect immunity in return. The Rome Statute, in principle, excludes comprehensive amnesties for core crimes, which complicates classic "peace-for-amnesty" deals. In the Sudan case, there were fears that the arrest warrant against President al-Bashir could derail peace negotiations for South Sudan and thus exacerbate the conflict. The structural weaknesses of the ICC—its dependence on state cooperation and the lack of an enforcement body—have reinforced the perception of selectivity, particularly after prominent failures such as the collapse of the case against Kenya's former president, Uhuru Kenyatta, Oyier said. Uhuru Kenyatta faced charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) related to crimes against humanity during the 2007-2008 post-election violence. The charges were withdrawn in December 2014 due to insufficient evidence and lack of cooperation from the Kenyan government.