WUNRN
ICC Women - Women's Initiatives for
Gender Justice:
ICC - International Criminal Court:
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Justice for Women Depends on the International Criminal
Court
Louise Chappell
- SPSS-IASH Visiting Professor at
8 October 2013 - The African Union will hold a summit from October 11-13 to
consider a mass withdrawal of the 34 African member states of the International
Criminal Court (ICC). This would be in response to the trials of
READ SECOND PART OF THIS WUNRN RELEASE (BELOW) TO
LEARN OUTCOME OF THE AU MEETINGS ON THE ICC
The African Union will hold a
summit from October 11-13 to consider a mass withdrawal of the 34
African member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC). This would be
in response to the trials of
The vote threatens to seriously
endanger the ICC and raises questions about what the court has delivered in its
first decade of operation. Given the ICC’s innovative mandate to advance gender justice,
it is worth asking specifically what would be lost in terms of women’s rights
if the ICC collapsed.
Many women’s rights actors
greeted the 1998 Rome Statute establishing the ICC
with jubilation. Largely due to their efforts at the negotiation stage, the ICC’s mandate to address impunity for war
crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide also included atrocities commonly
experienced by women, including a broad range of sexual and gender-based
crimes.
These advocates were also
successful in securing rules for a “fair” representation of women on the ICC’s
judiciary and dedicated positions for gender experts across the court’s
operations, including in the powerful Office of the Prosecutor.
Just over ten years since the
court opened its doors, it has produced some important advances in gender
justice. We have seen improvements in the way international criminal law
recognises crimes against women and girls.
Charges of gender-based crimes have now been brought in 11
of the 16 cases currently before the court, a proportion of almost 70%. This is
a much better record than the earlier UN ad hoc tribunals for
More women on the bench
One irrefutable area of progress has
been the ICC’s record on the representation of women judges. The court’s bench
is 60 per cent female, standing in stark contrast to the International Court of
Justice, which has only ever included four women judges in its 90-year history.
Importantly, in line with Rome Statute provisions, most of the ICC’s female
judges, as well as some of their male counterparts, have a history of
investigating or adjudicating issues of sexual and gender-based violence in
other settings.
The appointment in 2012 of Fatou Bensouda as the ICC’s second chief
prosecutor, who came to office pledging to investigate crimes of sexual
violence as a priority during her seven-year term, also sends a positive signal
that women’s experiences of conflict are taken seriously.
Gender justice has also been
strengthened through redress measures for victims, including the gradual development
of reparation principles that recognise women and men’s different experiences
of war and conflict and the need to address these in post-conflict settings
without reinforcing gender inequalities.
This is not to suggest that the
implementation of the ICC’s gender justice has been seamless. Numerous problems
exist. For example, charges of sexual or gender-based crimes are especially
vulnerable to collapse, with 50% of these charges failing to make it to trial.
This is the result of two problems: weak evidence presented by the prosecutor
and, in some cases, regressive judicial interpretation of the law.
Other problems include the lack of prioritisation of crimes of sexual and gender-based violence in the court’s investigations and poor resourcing for the critical outreach and victims’ services that benefit women.
What If the Court
Collapses?
Given these partial advancements in gender justice in the first decade of ICC, should we care if the AU vote provokes the court’s collapse?
The ICC is imperfect, no doubt,
but it does offer an unprecedented framework for advancing women’s rights, key
aspects of which are gradually being put into place. The full recognition of
the Court’s gender justice mandate is likely to arrive in small, highly
contested steps, but as a whole it does have the potential to be
transformative.
In order for such a
transformation to occur, three practical steps are required in the next decade.
The first is for key actors within the Court to recommit to and fully execute -
through investigations, judicial interpretation and outreach and victims
services - the strong gender justice mandate that is embedded in the Rome
Statute.
The second is for international
and national women’s rights organisations to build stronger links with the
Court; they are needed to pressure states to live up to their statutory
obligations and to make the ICC accountable for its gender justice mandate at
each critical turn.
Finally, the ICC needs to better
co-ordinate with the international architecture on women’s rights, including
the UN’s women, peace and security agenda, which is can act as an important
complement to the work of the Court.
The ICC still has considerable
room for improvement in addressing women’s rights, but we’d be worse off
without it. The AU vote is important on many levels, including reminding us
that to combat impunity for sexual and gender-based crimes amongst others, the
ICC - and the international community more broadly - must not just focus on
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THE AFRICAN UNION'S DEMANDS SIGNAL
ITS INCREASINGLY FRAYED RELATIONSHIP WITH THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT
15
October 2013 - By James Bullock
Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto are facing charges for crimes against humanity carried out in the post-election violence in 2007-8. As a signatory to the Rome Statute, the two politicians are required to attend, and Ruto has already appeared at hearings in the court in The Hague. Kenyatta has repeatedly called for his trial to be delayed and the AU’s ruling adds another layer of complexity to events. (However, it's significant that despite the weekend’s events, Ruto turned up at court yesterday.)
These decisions by the AU are the latest signs of the fraying relationship between the two organisations. With two African presidents – President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and Kenyatta – facing charges at The Hague, and with all 20 cases currently before the ICC relating to events in Africa, leaders on the continent have long argued that the Court is biased against Africa.
Although most of those cases were initiated at the request of African governments or are supported by them, this charge was repeated once again at the summit.
"The unfair treatment that we have been subjected to by the ICC is completely unacceptable," said Hailemariam Desalegn, Prime Minister of Ethiopia and the current AU chairman, adding that the recent moves “clearly reflected our [the AU’s] disappointment as far as Africa’s relationship with the ICC is concerned”.
However, the AU summit didn’t go so far as to call for a mass withdrawal from the Rome Statute, an idea which had allegedly been mooted by some.
Rumours that such a dramatic move could be in the offing grew in volume as the summit approached, but the idea didn’t generate enough support at the meeting to be passed, with reports suggesting that countries were roughly divided between Angolphone and Francophone nations.
On one side, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe as well as Algeria, which is not a member of the ICC, allegedly called for the AU to leave the Rome Statute. Many of the leaders from these countries have been particularly outspoken against the ICC with President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, for example, recently saying that “selective justice has eroded the credibility of the ICC on the African continent”, and Kenyatta telling the summit “The ICC has been reduced into a painfully farcical pantomime”.
However, on the other side, Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast, the Gambia (the country from which the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda hails), Mali, Senegal and Botswana are believed to have voted against such an action.
“Our ears will be open, but we are resolute in terms of standing by the principles of the International Criminal Court”, said Jeff Ramsey, Botswana’s information minister, in the lead up to the summit. “Of course, there are going to be discussions about the ICC at the summit, but withdrawal will be an extreme step.”
In rejecting the proposal at the summit, many countries also drew particular attention to the AU’s past failures at addressing conflicts on the continent, and warned that leaving the Rome Statue could allow for further impunity. Details are still being uncovered as to the rest of the attending members’ votes.
The AU has now issued its demands to the ICC with the condition that they be met by 12 November, the date Kenyatta’s trial is slated to commence. Should the AU not be satisfied with the ICC’s response, it will reconvene to discuss the issue further.
According to reports, a UN Security Council resolution, supported by France and the UK, is currently being drafted to postpone the ICC prosecution of Kenyatta. The resolution is intended to avoid a break-down between the ICC and AU.