Unintended Positive Complementarity: Why International Criminal Court Investigations May Increase Domestic Human Rights Prosecutions

Abstract

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is controversial, acutely so in Africa. The first thirty-nine people it indicted were all African. It did not open any formal investigations outside Africa until the 2016 decision to investigate conduct related to the 2008 Georgia-Russia war. The first three notifications of withdrawal from the ICC Statute, each made in 2016, were by Burundi, South Africa, and Gambia. While South Africa and Zambia reversed their initial intentions, Burundi in fact became the first state party to withdraw from the ICC in October 2017. These maneuvers are closely connected to country-specific political and legal considerations, but they overlap with concerns expressed by governments in other countries including Kenya and Namibia. Among these concerns is that “the ICC has become the greatest threat to Africa's sovereignty, peace and stability,” and that “the ICC is a colonial institution under the guise of international justice.”