Abstract
In 2001, the Rome Statute established the International Criminal Court (“ICC”)—the first and only permanent tribunal with a mandate to prosecute international crimes. African states, individually and through the African Union’s (“AU”) predecessor, actively participated in establishing the ICC. Today, African states make up the largest regional bloc of ICC member states, yet the AU has become by far the most vocal detractor of the ICC and its effort to fulfill its mandate.
Among advocates of international criminal justice, the dominant approach to analyzing the AU/ICC tension: (1) largely discredits the AU’s criticisms of the ICC, and (2) focuses on proving or improving the impartiality of the ICC. Few have been willing to engage the possibility that impartial implementation of the Rome Statute regime would itself have perverse implications for the very constituency that many argue the ICC primarily intends to benefit—victims of mass human rights violations in national jurisdictions that are unable or unwilling to prosecute these violations. This presentation will engage this possibility, and suggest that the AU’s criticism are most productively understood as directing attention to the various troubling ways the contemporary international justice regime undermines the political authority of African states and their populations.
Bio
E. Tendayi Achiume is Assistant Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, where she is a core faculty member of the Critical Race Studies Program and the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. Her research and teaching interests lie in international human rights law, international refugee law, migration, international criminal justice, and property. She earned her B.A. from Yale University and her J.D. from Yale Law School. She is a former law clerk of Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke and Justice Yvonne Mokgoro on the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Cost: Free