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Africa has a long tradition of leaders who inflict great brutality on their own people and who, after flaunting their contempt for human rights, escape accountability for their actions as long as they remain in power. This creates a precedent of impunity for future despots. A much-needed break in the sordid trend occurred this week, as Chadian dictator Hissène Habré was sentenced to life in prison by a Senegalese court for war crimes committed during his rule from 1982 to 1990. This marks the first time an African leader has been prosecuted and sentenced by the courts of another African country.
As much as this represents significant progress for human rights in Africa, many other African despots still roam freely and still govern. One of them is Omar al-Bashir, well known for instigating crimes against humanity in Darfur, Sudan. Outstanding arrest warrants, issued in 2009 and 2010 by the International Criminal Court, have failed to bring al-Bashir to justice. Habré’s prosecution will not, unfortunately, remove the obstacles to holding standing rulers such as al-Bashir accountable. It does, however, set a precedent that could make such prosecutions easier in future.
On May 8th, Ismail Omar Guelleh was sworn in for a fourth term as president of Djibouti. The ceremony hosted a range of foreign dignitaries, including an American delegation, and welcomed Sudanese president al-Bashir without a hint of interference or any regard for his arrest warrants. The International Criminal Court (ICC) who issued these warrants has given Djibouti until June 24th to explain “their failure to arrest and surrender Omar al-Bashir while present on the territory of the Republic of Djibouti.” While Djibouti is a signatory to the 2002 Rome Statute to establish the court, the ICC lacks any structure to enforce sanctions on countries that fail to arrest those wanted by the court. The Sudanese president visited Uganda just a few days after the Djibouti visit, with a similar outcome: Uganda’s president gave a speech calling the ICC “useless”, prompting a number of western delegations to walk out (including the American diplomats present).
Much of the time, the leaders who refuse to take action against human rights criminals from the rest of Africa have themselves engaged in repression or brutality in their own countries. The ICC has monitored Guelleh himself in relation to violence against opposition parties prior to the election which granted Guelleh a fourth term – a term Guelleh himself had promised not to run for. Government forces killed 19 people in December 2015, during the run-up to the election. Guelleh has been accused of other forms of repression and despotism during his 16-year rule of the country. Pursuing war criminals has generated some animosity towards the ICC among African leaders. Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta threatened to leave the ICC after a failed case against him in relation to post-election violence in 2007.
Kenya found support among other African Union members for plans to withdraw from the ICC, in part because it argued (accurately) that the ICC has a history of almost exclusively investigating African countries. Until an investigation in Georgia earlier this year, the ICC had not investigated a non-African country a single time in eleven years. Even though most European governments accept the jurisdiction of the ICC, countries including the United States, China, Russia, and India still have not even signed the Rome Statute. It is also worth noting that many of the African cases investigated by the ICC were looked into at the request of the UN Security Council, or in some cases on behalf of the victims in African nations themselves. To be considered legitimate, the ICC needs to make efforts to wield its authority to address human rights violations in other parts of the world besides Africa. This does not, however, change the fact that many Africans support the ICC. When national governments are incapable of serving justice, it has essentially served as the only available recourse. Recent survey data from Afrobarometer, for one, found that a majority of Kenyans endorsed the cases as an “important tool for fighting impunity” (61%) and opposed their country withdrawing from the Rome Statute (55%).
Even so, Hissène Habré’s case (and the fact that it was prosecuted by the African Union) might signal a shift in the efficacy of African institutions. The Extraordinary African Chambers that tried Habré within the Senegalese judiciary only came into being in 2013 as a result of years of hard work by Chadian advocates and their allies. The African Union’s backing for it only came after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) forced Senegal to either prosecute Habré or send him to a jurisdiction that would. Even so, the successful trial and conviction has inaugurated a precedent that victims in other countries can use in their own future efforts. It will take more such cases, however, before the African Union and its member states can credibly claim to exercise the mandate of international justice and accountability without need of the ICC or other legal bodies. In the meantime, non-African courts remain the only tool most of those pursuing justice have at their disposal.
Photo by Human Rights Watch.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
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Ending Africa’s Culture of Impunity
June 10, 2016
Africa has a long tradition of leaders who inflict great brutality on their own people and who, after flaunting their contempt for human rights, escape accountability for their actions as long as they remain in power. This creates a precedent of impunity for future despots. A much-needed break in the sordid trend occurred this week, as Chadian dictator Hissène Habré was sentenced to life in prison by a Senegalese court for war crimes committed during his rule from 1982 to 1990. This marks the first time an African leader has been prosecuted and sentenced by the courts of another African country.
As much as this represents significant progress for human rights in Africa, many other African despots still roam freely and still govern. One of them is Omar al-Bashir, well known for instigating crimes against humanity in Darfur, Sudan. Outstanding arrest warrants, issued in 2009 and 2010 by the International Criminal Court, have failed to bring al-Bashir to justice. Habré’s prosecution will not, unfortunately, remove the obstacles to holding standing rulers such as al-Bashir accountable. It does, however, set a precedent that could make such prosecutions easier in future.
On May 8th, Ismail Omar Guelleh was sworn in for a fourth term as president of Djibouti. The ceremony hosted a range of foreign dignitaries, including an American delegation, and welcomed Sudanese president al-Bashir without a hint of interference or any regard for his arrest warrants. The International Criminal Court (ICC) who issued these warrants has given Djibouti until June 24th to explain “their failure to arrest and surrender Omar al-Bashir while present on the territory of the Republic of Djibouti.” While Djibouti is a signatory to the 2002 Rome Statute to establish the court, the ICC lacks any structure to enforce sanctions on countries that fail to arrest those wanted by the court. The Sudanese president visited Uganda just a few days after the Djibouti visit, with a similar outcome: Uganda’s president gave a speech calling the ICC “useless”, prompting a number of western delegations to walk out (including the American diplomats present).
Much of the time, the leaders who refuse to take action against human rights criminals from the rest of Africa have themselves engaged in repression or brutality in their own countries. The ICC has monitored Guelleh himself in relation to violence against opposition parties prior to the election which granted Guelleh a fourth term – a term Guelleh himself had promised not to run for. Government forces killed 19 people in December 2015, during the run-up to the election. Guelleh has been accused of other forms of repression and despotism during his 16-year rule of the country. Pursuing war criminals has generated some animosity towards the ICC among African leaders. Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta threatened to leave the ICC after a failed case against him in relation to post-election violence in 2007.
Kenya found support among other African Union members for plans to withdraw from the ICC, in part because it argued (accurately) that the ICC has a history of almost exclusively investigating African countries. Until an investigation in Georgia earlier this year, the ICC had not investigated a non-African country a single time in eleven years. Even though most European governments accept the jurisdiction of the ICC, countries including the United States, China, Russia, and India still have not even signed the Rome Statute. It is also worth noting that many of the African cases investigated by the ICC were looked into at the request of the UN Security Council, or in some cases on behalf of the victims in African nations themselves. To be considered legitimate, the ICC needs to make efforts to wield its authority to address human rights violations in other parts of the world besides Africa. This does not, however, change the fact that many Africans support the ICC. When national governments are incapable of serving justice, it has essentially served as the only available recourse. Recent survey data from Afrobarometer, for one, found that a majority of Kenyans endorsed the cases as an “important tool for fighting impunity” (61%) and opposed their country withdrawing from the Rome Statute (55%).
Even so, Hissène Habré’s case (and the fact that it was prosecuted by the African Union) might signal a shift in the efficacy of African institutions. The Extraordinary African Chambers that tried Habré within the Senegalese judiciary only came into being in 2013 as a result of years of hard work by Chadian advocates and their allies. The African Union’s backing for it only came after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) forced Senegal to either prosecute Habré or send him to a jurisdiction that would. Even so, the successful trial and conviction has inaugurated a precedent that victims in other countries can use in their own future efforts. It will take more such cases, however, before the African Union and its member states can credibly claim to exercise the mandate of international justice and accountability without need of the ICC or other legal bodies. In the meantime, non-African courts remain the only tool most of those pursuing justice have at their disposal.
Photo by Human Rights Watch.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
