Madi Jobarteh

It is indeed a significant decision but long overdue that the ICC has now expressed its intention to seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The need to restrain individuals, governments, and organizations, if they cannot do for themselves from harming others cannot be overemphasized. The blatant and indiscriminate use of violence must not be entertained in a civilized society for any reason. Hence the decision by the ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan to seek indictments against Israeli and Hamas leaders is indeed welcome.

Today marks 52 years since Nkrumah died. All throughout his life he stood up for African unity as a means to guarantee peace, freedom and prosperity for Africans. In 1963 he laid a clear plan for unity noting that without unity Africa would perish. Today, Africa is in the shackles of poverty, human rights violations, self-perpetuating rulers, corruption, and at the mercy of old and new imperialists - the West on one hand and on the other hand China, Russia, India, Turkey, Iran and Gulf States! What is evident is that the AU and its regional blocs and African governments have failed to salvage their people. What Nkrumah feared and warned against was the setting up a body like the AU has come to pass. That it will be a body like the UN which will draft high sounding resolutions and great treaties but totally ignored by states hence become a conduit to weaken, divide and impoverish African people.

The AU and ECOWAS must take a definite position on Macky Sall in fulfilment of their instruments if they are to preserve and strengthen democracy in Africa. The issue of Senegal is crucial to the success or failure of democracy on the continent. Thus, AU and its regional bodies must have the courage of their convictions to stop treating delinquent presidents with kids' gloves.

This article seeks to highlight the fact that since Independence African governments and the AU with its regional blocks must take responsibility for the crisis on the continent. Their failure to uphold their own constitutions and instruments but to consistently flout laws while underperforming has led to the poverty, deprivation and crises in Africa. The solution therefore lies in their hands. Africans, like all peoples of the world, also wish for themselves happiness, peace, security and prosperity for which their government should enable them to achieve these.

The international legal and political system is fragmented and wrongly structured hence the inability of the world to curb the occurrence of heinous crimes. The UN needs to co-opt the ICC as an integral agency enjoying the same level of power and influence as the Security Council. This is the only means to finally address the imbalances in global institutions and processes and ensure global peace and security.

The ICC has faced severe criticism from Africa particularly, but also from other quarters that it has not been effective, and its costly and big targets like George Bush and Tony Blair are not being investigated for the atrocities of the Iraq  War. The argument put forward here is that ICC in itself is limited to do the job it is supposed to do because of many inherent shortcomings. The bigger picture is that the entire international legal and political system itself is standing on a fault line, and unless the ICC is made part of the UN system at the same level of power and status as the UN Security Council, the dream of creating a culture of accountability in stopping heinous crimes will be far-fetched.

Once again the various presidents and prime ministers of African countries are meeting in yet another Africa Union summit in the Rwandan capital, Kigali from 17 and 18 July 2016 amid pomp and pageantry. These so-called leaders represent most of the more than 1 billion people of the continent in which more than half of the population are below 25 years.

Contrary to popular view by international mainstream development organizations including African governments and institutions, Africa is not rising. If anything, the continent has failed woefully since the founding of the OAU 53 years ago. At the core of this failure is the incredibly corrupt and weak political leadership in the continent.