ICC Operations in Africa: Images of the Issue

• In Event: Roundtable: The Development of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: The Politics of Criminalization of Some Heads of State Around the World

Abstract

The principle of domestic jurisdiction in international law makes national governments responsible for protecting their citizens, investigating alleged abuses of human rights in their countries and bringing the perpetrators to justice. They governments may also extradite those accused of abuse of human rights to any other states prepared to give them a fair trial. Problem arises however, when governments are unable or unwilling to perform this duty or are themselves perpetrators of these crimes. Therefore, the development of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was intended to fill the void by fulfilling a central and pivotal role in global justice. Be that as it may with the good intentions of the Court, serious and complex issues exist. This paper, therefore, strives to explore the issue of the politics of criminalization of some heads of states in Africa by the Court so that deeper insights and lesions can be gleaned from the process.

Author

• Charles Ubah, Georgia College & State University