African Union Drafts Challenge To Withdraw from International Criminal Court

by Lawrence Freeman

African leaders at the 26th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union held at the end of January in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia dealt the International Criminal Court-(ICC) another blow. Although the AU’s attack on the ICC was not fatal (yet), it demonstrated an increased scrutiny of the ICC’s racist and imperial attitudes towards Africa spearheaded by leaders from Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, and Ethiopia. At the Summit, the AU adopted without amendments a proposal by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, for the AU Summit to develop a road map for the withdrawal of all 34 African nations who signed the Rome statue in 1998 that established the ICC in 2002. As a result, the AU mandated its Open-Ended Committee of Foreign Affairs Ministers to discuss their intention with the United Nations Security Council.
President Kenyatta, himself a target of the ICC, until the allegations against him were dropped, told the AU members:
“We refuse to be carried along in a vehicle that has strayed off course to the detriment of our sovereignty, security and dignity as Africans. In the face of mutating global terrorist threat that is costing us lives and great economic loss, in the midst of
playing our part in mediating multiple peace processes in our region, we have to contend with an ICC pursuing weak and politicized cases…This is not what Kenya signed up for when we joined the ICC. I highly doubt that those of you that are members expected this to be the way the court would conduct itself…We have been sorely disappointed…”
Chadian President Idriss Deby, who newly assumed the position of Chairman of AU, joined other African leaders in criticizing the ICC’s focus on going after Africans: “Elsewhere in the world, many things happen, many flagrant violations of human rights, but nobody cares.”
South African President, Jacob Zuma, in support of the AU decision to review its relationship to the ICC announced the policy for his Country. “Our strongly held view is that it is now impossible, under the circumstances, for South Africa to continue to participate in the Rome Statute. South Africa is seriously reviewing its participation in the Rome Statue and will announce its decision in due course.”

The ICC Was Rotten From the Beginning
After the break-up of the Soviet Union, the City of London-based financial oligarchy, through its many assets, launched a campaign to establish a world court that could indict and remove leaders of sovereign governments, furthering their financial and political control, especially in resource rich Africa. To this end, in the 1990s, the first efforts to establish the ICC and the complementary doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) were initiated. You can see in Africa today how much damage has already resulted from the creation of ICC and R2P’s regime change.
In April 1999, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair delivered his “Manifesto” for the right to so called humanitarian intervention against sovereign nations to the Economics Club in Chicago, which justified military attacks against nations, whose leaders are targeted for regime change. If not for this régime change intervention against President Kaddafi, would Boko Haram and the jihadists in North Africa be as well equipped and as deadly as they are today?
The ICC itself was a creation of international drug kingpin, and World War II Hungarian Nazi collaborator George Soros, and Lord Mark Malloch Brown, formerly of the British Foreign Office. Through Soros’ worldwide network of so called humanitarian groups, and a coalition over 100 non-governmental organizations, which still operate to shape polices of the ICC today, the sovereignty of African nations is continually threatened.
African nations were foolish to sign the Rome Statute treaty and give away their sovereignty to an international body, one that represents no nation, no people, and has no constituency other than supra-national powers. The US, UK, China, Russia, and Israel among others were smart enough to not to join. Of the nine nations being investigated by the ICC, eight are from the African continent. Of the 123 signers of the Rome Statute, 34 are African nations, giving them a plurality.
While the Rome Statute requires each individual nation must vote to withdraw from the ICC, followed a one year wafting period before it takes effect, a political decision by the AU for a withdrawal en masse, might be enough to finally bury the ICC, which should have been aborted before it even came into existence.

Posted by on Feb 14 2016. Filed under African News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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