The African Union’s staunch support for al-Bashir, cloaked in criticism of the International Criminal Court, denied justice to the millions affected by the conflict in Sudan.
For Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, ‘never again’ was ‘a prayer, a promise, a vow’. Unfortunately, this vow is all too often broken.
We looked at ten countries in East Africa and found poverty and politics were much more important drivers of conflict and displacement than climate change.
Arguably Africa’s most powerful diplomatic player, South Africa is now backing out of the world’s most important mechanism for bringing war criminals to justice.
A growing field of policy analysis now focuses on reducing armed violence. Remarkable consensus has emerged at high policy levels around the basic elements of an approach to reduce violence.
South Africa’s withdrawal from the ICC could have mere symbolic value. The country will continue to have obligations to binding decisions taken by the UN Security Council – including those pertaining to the court.
The South African government’s failure to arrest Omar al-Bashir flies in the face of the Constitutional Court’s decision in 2014 that South Africa has a duty to abide by its international obligations.
The attempt to arrest al-Bashir is the first time a court in an ICC member state has come to answering the question whether a sitting head of state can be detained and handed over to the ICC.
Senior Research Fellow, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and Visiting Professor University of Buckingham, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs