Uhuru Kenyatta (R) and William Ruto (L) greet a crowd in Nairobi, Kenya, March 2, 2013. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)
Kenya could be the first nation to ever quit the International Criminal Court after its parliament voted Thursday to withdraw from the court’s jurisdiction ahead of the trials of its president and his deputy at The Hague. The move counts as one of the strongest official repudiations thus far of the ICC and will surely further undermine the court’s standing on the African continent, where it is already widely unpopular.
Though Thursday’s parliamentary vote will have no effect on the pending prosecutions of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto, who are both accused of orchestrating the country’s 2007 post-election violence during which about 1,200 people were killed, it is a crucial bit of tone-setting on the part of the country’s ruling Jubilee coalition. By relying on the tried-and-true strategy of leap-frogging off of the ICC’s unpopularity for political gain, Kenyatta’s supporters in government will have preemptively counteracted the bad press around their leaders’ upcoming trials by resurrecting long-held grievances against the court while furthering the narrative of Kenyatta and Ruto’s victimization at its hands.
While Nairobi obviously has its own motivations for at least giving the impression that they are breaking away from The Hague (still no guarantee, with a few more steps of bureaucratic maneuvering standing in the way of an official withdrawal), the precedent that is being set here could mark a turning point for the court in Africa and might inspire other vocal ICC critic-states to follow in Kenya’s footsteps — or at least threaten to. Such a prospect has to be dismaying for an institution that, despite its many flaws, had high hopes of turning around its reputation on the continent with the recent instatement of Gambian-born Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.
Adding insult to injury, Kenyan parliamentary speaker Adan Duale justified Thursday’s vote by pointing to the refusal of the United States and other major powers to join the ICC in the first place. True, though somewhat disingenuous: the ICC cannot compel any nation to sign on. More to the point, Duale’s argument also effectively highlights the double standards at play in international dynamics around the court — especially with its record of only prosecuting Africans — and will provide a buffer for Kenya against any critical response by non-member states like the U.S.
This is Kenya’s battlespace prep for Ruto and Kenyatta’s trials. Expect increasing aggression once proceedings get underway — and prepare for the court to look powerless even in the event of a conviction (an outcome the court has only managed once since its founding in 2002). All of which means that, regardless of where Kenya’s withdrawal motion ends up, and regardless of the outcome, political attacks against the court ipso facto are fast undermining the body’s utility on the continent and elsewhere.
