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On Monday, President Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, said that while the International Criminal Court in The Hague has filed lawsuits against US military and intelligence officials for war crimes committed in Afghanistan, the United States would prohibit them from traveling to the United States.
"We will not cooperate with the ICC, we will not provide any assistance to the ICC," said Bolton. "We will not join the ICC and we will let the ICC die alone – after all, for all intents and purposes, ICC has already died for us."
The United States is far from the only country to have opposed this court, created in 2002 to prosecute serious cases of human rights violations. Adam Taylor wrote Monday in the Washington Post: "More than 120 states are parties to the Rome Statute – the treaty that created the ICC – while 23 others, including the United States, signed the treaty but never ratified.
Many of the grievances against the court come from Africa, because, as Taylor wrote, "ten of the eleven ongoing court investigations are centered on African states and thirty-seven defendants are from Africa".
In early 2017, the African Union even called on its member states to withdraw from the ICC, claiming that it was biased against the continent. Bolton's insistence on Monday that the US would not cooperate with the court echoed sentiments expressed by a number of African governments in recent years.
Burundi has declared that the ICC is a "weapon used by the West to enslave"
In 2015, Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza announced that he would seek a third term, triggering a political crisis in this East African country that would make at least 1,000 dead and hundreds thousands of others displaced.
The dispute over whether a third term would violate the constitution quickly became violent, but Nkurunziza continued to prevail for a third term, despite an attempted coup d'etat. In September 2017, a report by the US Commission of Inquiry on Burundi stated that it had collected evidence of several crimes committed since the beginning of the unrest in 2015, including torture, rape, extrajudicial executions and killings. disappearances.
The following month, Burundi officially left the court, becoming the first country to do so since its inception in 2002. "The ICC has emerged as a political tool and a weapon used by the West to enslave [other countries]", Said the spokesman for the presidency, Willy Nyamitwe. "It's a great victory for Burundi as it defended its sovereignty and national pride."
Last November, the ICC approved the opening of an investigation on Burundi anyway. But Burundian justice minister Aimee Laurentine Kanyan said the government had rejected the decision to investigate "and reiterated her firm determination not to cooperate," Reuters reported.
The Gambia called it the "International Court of the Caucasus"
In 2015, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh called on the ICC to examine cases of African migrants "who died on European shores in unusual circumstances". He was referring to migrants whose boats and canoes had capsized at sea television in June 2015 stated that "if it is not done deliberately, how is it possible that every time a ship capsizes? , the Italian Navy saves only a few people?
Then, in October 2016, just before the turn of events in which Jammeh lost his reelection and, under international pressure, left the country, the long-time leader announced that The Gambia would leave the ICC. He said the court ignored war crimes committed by countries outside Africa and unfairly focused on prosecuting Africans.
Jammeh's Minister of Information, Sheriff Bojang, said that "the ICC, although it is called the International Criminal Court, is in fact an international court of the Caucasus for persecution and humiliation. people of color, especially Africans. 20 years, and his government has been accused of a wide range of human rights violations.
Jammeh left The Gambia in January 2017 after losing the presidential election to President Adama Barrow. In February 2017, Barrow turned the corner on Jammeh's attempt to leave the ICC, announcing that the country was planning to stay in court.
South Africa said that "the ICC is biased"
The ICC has issued an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 2009 after indicting war crimes and crimes against humanity for atrocities committed in the Sudanese region Darfur between 2003 and 2008.
But Bashir is still on the run, although he continues to travel abroad after the ICC has issued his warrant.
In 2015, six years after the end of the arrest warrant, Bashir went to South Africa for a meeting of the African Union and managed to avoid being detained. The South African government, then led by President Jacob Zuma, insisted that he was immune because he was in South Africa as head of his country's delegation to the meeting. from the AU. Despite the controversy, Bashir finally managed to return home for free. Zuma claimed that "the ICC is biased".
The ICC later determined that South Africa should have arrested Bashir, but the court refused to send South Africa back to the United States. However, the conflict over what to do about Bashir has hurt South Africa's relationship with the court, and in October 2016 the South African government announced its intention to leave the country. ICC.
The country's high court prevented her from doing so, claiming that she had not asked the parliament's permission. In 2017, Judge Phineas Mojapelo of the High Court described the initial attempt as "unconstitutional and invalid," reported Reuters.
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