Why mass pull-out from International Criminal Court failed

By GEOFFREY MOSOKU

Reluctance by nations from South and West Africa reportedly led to the shelving of a proposal for mass walkout from the ICC by 34 states during the AU summit at the weekend in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

A special heads of state summit instead resolved to give the ICC and the UN Security Council an ultimatum to halt the criminal cases against President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto.

In the build-up to the special summit, African nations had threatened to stage a mass pull-out in protest for what they term as targeting of Africans by the Hague-based court.

However, this failed to make it to the agenda of the day, with sources indicating that AU members were greatly divided over the proposal, as majority of west and southern African countries were said to be against the move.

At the Council of Ministers meeting on Friday, West and South Africa countries are said to have warned that any resolution to withdraw will be ill-timed, arguing that in any case, most countries are members of the ICC as individual and not as a group.

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The agenda

The Council of Ministers sets the agenda to be debated and adopted by the heads of state summit and failure to include this agenda left only East Africa countries including Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda as the only proponents for mass withdrawal.

The Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti blamed the absence of certain nations from the AU extraordinary summit that took place on Saturday in Ethiopia, for the failure to call for a mass withdrawal from the International Criminal Court.

Karti, according to the Sudan Tribune, disclosed that unspecified states on Friday’s ministerial meeting adopted stances that “generally weakened” the African position.

Opposition towards the 11-year-old ICC runs deepest in East Africa – not surprising as two of the region’s presidents, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta – have been indicted, while Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto is already on trial on charges of crimes against humanity.

“There are strong passions around the issue. The ICC has been on the agenda of every AU summit since Bashir’s indictment,” Steven Gruzd, an analyst with South African Institute of International Affairs, told the BBC.