UNITED NATIONS — The International Criminal Court has begun investigating war crimes in Georgia, is looking into British soldiers accused of torture in Iraq and, in one of its most politically delicate missions yet, sent a team to Israel to discuss crimes in Gaza.
But as the court tries to expand into new geography and investigate new types of crimes, it faces the most serious challenge to its existence: Three nations, all from Africa, have announced that they will no longer work with the tribunal, intensifying a longstanding debate over whether it is biased against the continent.
This week, Gambia, known for crushing political dissent, announced its intention to pull out of the tribunal, denouncing it on state television as the “international Caucasian court.” Though most of the court’s judges are not white, almost all of its full-fledged investigations have focused on Africa. And the planned withdrawal carried an extra barb: Gambia is the home country of the court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda.
Before that, Burundi announced its plans to withdraw, months after Ms. Bensouda announced that she would open a preliminary examination into the killings of antigovernment protesters there.
But most damaging for the court, one of its early champions, South Africa, announced last week that it would leave, too, saying that the court’s writ was “incompatible” with its ability to resolve political conflicts in its neighborhood.
The exits point to a deep structural problem with the way the court was set up. It was meant to be a one-stop shop to try the most powerful perpetrators of the worst violations: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide.
But many of the world’s major powers — including China, Russia and the United States — did not join, which means their citizens are not subject to its jurisdiction without the Security Council’s approval. And these world powers have vetoes on the council, so they can shield themselves and their allies if they are accused of war crimes.
Of the court’s 124 members, 34 are in Africa. Most European and Latin American countries also joined. (El Salvador was the latest.) Most Arab nations, with the exception of Jordan, did not.
“The fact that the big powers never ratified, and with the increase of out-of-Africa conflicts, particularly now in the Middle East, it’s led to the situation we are in,” said Louise Arbour, a former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights who also served as chief prosecutor of the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal.
The court’s structure meant that it could pursue cases only in countries that signed on, or in countries that were handed to it by the Security Council. And even then, the prosecutor needs some level of cooperation to arrest suspects or they can evade trial, as the case of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan has shown.
Of the prosecutor’s 10 current full-fledged investigations, all except one, in Georgia, involve African politicians and warlords. The court’s 10 preliminary examinations — the prosecutor’s first look at a case before diving into a full-fledged investigation — are geographically broader, including inquiries in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinianterritories.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/world/africa/africa-international-criminal-court.html?ref=africa