A nice little comedy. This African Court of Justice and Human Rights has been in the works for 10 years now. Not much has happened. The idea was to combine the (a modest joke that exists, but does bugger-all, in Arusha) and the Court of Justice of The African Union (a joke that never even got started). Oh, GoK has always worked hard to undermine the former court, e.g. when somebody went there with a case on the Ogiek getting screwed; amusing to see a change in tune.
There have always been two major problems, all based on the fact that the Africans, noisy though they are, don't themselves take these things seriously:
* To date, only about half of all countries have "signed up" with the African Court of Justice and Human Rights. More than that have "signed up" with the ICC.
* Hardly anyone has been rushing to sign up on the so-called Malabo Protocol,which supposedly extends the jurisdiction of the 10+-years non-existent court to cover international crimes and gives immunities to Big People.
A part of the "problem" is that some countries are unhappy that the "protocol" does not give them what they want: during the negotiations last year, some countries, being African countries, wanted "leading a popular uprising" included in the list of the crimes the court should deal with, under "unconstitutional change of government" ... (There was some disagreement as what would be a legal definition of "popular uprising", so the idea was put on hold until some committee came up with something.)
* The new-and-improved "court's" biggest problem has always been that everyone talks it up but nobody will put in any money. The idea has always been that "donors" and "development partners" will fund it, but one suspects that they don't see much point in it---and especially not while all sorts of insults are being hurled in their direction.
Uhuru's $1 million won't do much help. The AU's budgetary figures over the last few years show that the funds are not there to even run a single trial.
Neither Kenyan nor any other African country will really withdraw from the ICC. That is just talk, and they know it; just look at Museveni in the last month! Besides, all those motor-mouth leaders know that if they ever get into trouble, it be far better to be in Europe than at home, running the risk of kienyeji justice.
So, what is Jubilee's game?
Some time ago, Karim Khan stood up in court, in a public session, and gave the names of those who supposedly fixed Ruto. And he should know: he has seen whatever the OTP claims to have on Ruto.
Much of the last few court sessions have been "private", at the request of either OTP or Defence. But enough is emerging to indicate that Team Ruto plans to return to the idea that their man is an innocent victim of nasty PNU types. I expect this to be a key point in their no-case submissions.
In the circumstances, and considering 2017, it is wise to be seen as attempting to save Ruto: pray for him, urge the ICC to drop his case (with standard threat to withdraw), support an African court that would (supposedly) take over the cases, etc. All know that none of that will help, but this is a game of perceptions. Or so they hope.
Topic: Jubilee To Withdraw Kenya from the ICC (Read 3628 times)