President Uhuru Kenyatta recently gave the strongest signal ever that Kenya will withdraw its membership from International Criminal Court because he perceived it to be a political tool rather than a court of justice. President Kenyatta is absolutely right on this.
One needs to look at what is happening in Aleppo region of Syria to understand the magnitude of Mr. Kenyatta’s sentiments. Aleppo is a Northern Syrian city that Russia and President Bashar al-Assad have been fighting to reclaim from the rebels. After four-and-a-half years of debilitating civil war in which UN estimates more than 400,000 people have been killed, the international community is no closer to bringing anyone suspected of war crimes in Syria to account.
The atrocities committed can be attributed on two sides. One led by Russia and Iran which is backing the Assad regime and the other sides by the rebel’s coalition who at some point were being given US-approved weapons. We have seen the Assad regime spray chemical weapons on its civilians, hospitals destroyed in which dozens of people lost their lives. The UN on recently warned of systemic murder being perpetrated by Syrian soldiers against citizens in neighbourhoods that have been taken from rebel forces. According to UN reports, hundreds of people have been executed, and surviving civilians are being prevented from leaving Aleppo.
One wonders then why ICC has either on its own volition or as a result of United Nations Security Council referral begun investigations of war crimes against humanity in Syria. A number of reasons explain this including the stalemate between Russia and the rest of the members of the Security Council. Syria is not a member of ICC. In order for ICC to intervene; the matter will have to be referred by the Security Council. This means that Russia as the rest of the members has to vote in favour of the referral or abstain which isn’t likely. Russia remains supportive of Assad and it has supplied him with heavy artillery to fight the rebels.
The war in Syria is seen as a proxy war between Russia and the West. Russians have been arming the government side while the West has supplied weapons to the rebels. According to the UN inquiry on Syria the rebels that the West supports have committed war crimes. This, therefore, complicates matters and makes it impossible for the West to use ICC to bring down Assad and bolster efforts to replace him with the opposition. Western powers are not keen to indict the side they support thus not keen for ICC to take up the matter.
The last reason is the Golan Heights, a rocky plateau in south-western Syria seized by Israel from Syria in the closing stages of the 1967 Six-Day War. The heights give Israel an excellent vantage point for monitoring Syrian movements. Israel and her allies have resisted any attempts to come under the jurisdiction of ICC. The US will be reluctant to pursue a Syrian referral because it would include the Golan Heights, which would put territory under Israeli control within the Court’s jurisdiction.
So President Kenyatta’s sentiments are not farfetched. The African states must zealously defend their sovereignty but at the same time work towards improving their human rights records and embrace democracy as yardsticks of self-governance. Only by doing so will foreign biased institutions such as ICC stop imposing themselves on the continent.
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