Africa's fractured relationship with the ICC

Since its inception 25 years ago, 33 African states have joined the ICC with Ivory Coast the most recent to do so in 2013. They were all expecting justice for victims of crimes.

“I think that generally it has done well in its effort to provide some justice for victims in Africa,” African legal aid practitioner Alhassan Yahaya Seini told DW.

But what started as a good relationship between Africa and the ICC is now fractured. In recent years, Africa has complained about unfair targeting.

The ICC seems to enjoy strong support among civil society groups in Africa but that is not the views of some African leaders.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame suggested that Africans have become the scapegoat in the ICC’s push to execute its mandate.

“The ICC was supposed to address the whole world, but it ended up covering only Africa,” Kagame told British-Sudanese telecoms tycoon and philanthropist Mo Ibrahim in 2018.

“The court seems to have been designed to work against Africans and against African leaders,” she said. “There are so many leaders in the Western world who have committed crimes against humanity in different countries like Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and none of them have ever been taken to the International Criminal Court.”