With its leaders facing trial, Kenya quits International Criminal Court

But indicted President Kenyatta and Vice President Ruto say they will still appear before the ICC.

A day after Kenya turned its back on the International Criminal Court (ICC), officials at the Hague-based tribunal say they will not allow Kenya’s vice president to move the court hearings to East Africa.

Yesterday Kenya’s parliament voted to pull out of the ICC – the first African country to do so. That decision comes shortly before the ICC starts trials of Kenya's president and vice president. So far both men have said they will appear at The Hague, but speculation has begun that the vote may be the first step toward cutting off cooperation. 

President Uhuru Kenyatta and Vice President William Ruto were indicted for mass violence and deaths after the 2007 elections. Ruto faces trial at the ICC next week, on Sept. 10, and Kenyatta on Nov. 12. 

This summer ICC officials hinted that they might allow parts of Ruto’s trial to take place in Kenya or Tanzania. But today, less than 24 hours after Kenyan lawmakers in a raucous session voted to leave the ICC, the possibility was ended.

Inside Kenya and in many African quarters, a juggernaut of anti-ICC sentiment has been building. 

As the Monitor ‘s Mike Pflanz reported yesterday: 

 Kenya will become the first country to pull out of the International Criminal Court after legislators Thursday staged what amounted to a parliamentary revolt against the trials of the president and his deputy, scheduled to start next week.

An overwhelming majority of National Assembly members voted after four hours of largely one-sided debate to “withdraw from the Rome Statute,” the treaty that established the world court in 2002.

The move was a clear snub to Kenya’s traditional allies in the West, who largely support the ICC and who have warned that Kenya risks isolation if its leaders fail to attend their trials.

Though it will likely play well with the many ordinary Kenyans whose support for the ICC has eroded as cases have dragged on, the vote will, in fact, have no effect on the eight separate charges of crimes against humanity faced by Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya’s president, or William Ruto, his deputy. Mr. Ruto’s trial begins Tuesday in The Hague.

“A government’s decision would not change Kenya’s obligation under international law … to fully cooperate with the ICC in respect of cases that have already been initiated,” says Fadi El Abdallah, spokesman for the ICC.

“It’s not possible to stop independent judicial and legal proceedings via political measures.”

Fatou Bensouda, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, put it more bluntly:  “The judicial process is now in motion,” she says. “Justice must run its course.”

Fewer than half of Kenya's 349 legislators were present in the National Assembly chamber, with its banked rows of red leather-backed chairs and heavy red, green and black carpet.

Lawmaker Aden Duale, began the debate by saying the motion would "protect the sovereignty of our country and of our citizens" and "redeem the image of Kenya." 

Another legislator, during raucous speeches, said it was time to condemn the ICC to "the cesspool of history."

Mass walkout

Opposition legislators, who had said they would try to block the proposition, walked out en masse when they realized that they would not have the numbers to overturn the motion.

One, Jakoyo Midiwo, said before he left the chamber, that it was "a dark day for Kenya" and that the country would "suffer consequences of pulling out." 

Mr. Kenyatta, and Ruto, who deny all the ICC charges, are accused of having links to election violence that followed Kenya’s 2007 election, when they were political opponents.

They are said to have been “indirect co-perpetrators” of the two months of clashes that left more than 1,100 people dead and some 600,000 homeless.

Both have repeatedly promised to cooperate with the court, a position that was – officially at least – still in place as the parliamentary debate got underway.

'Setting the stage'

But analysts question if Thursday’s special sitting of the National Assembly, which was recalled from recess for the vote, was in fact preparing the ground for Kenyatta and his deputy to turn their backs on the court.

“They seem to be setting the stage for some level of non-cooperation at some point,” says Mwalimu Mati, director of Mars Group, a Kenyan governance watchdog.

“The vote seems to be a way for them to create a situation where they can say that the Kenyan people, through their representatives at the National Assembly, no longer want anything to do with the ICC," Mr. Mati continued. “That would make the survival of two individuals a matter that would have an impact on an entire country.”

And that it would. A withdrawal from the international body would likely further chill relations with traditional allies in the West, including the US, whose officials have repeatedly called for an end to impunity for political violence in Kenya.

On his summer trip to Africa, US President Obama bypassed Kenya, his father’s homeland, because it was considered improper and perhaps embarrassing for him to be hosted there by men accused of crimes against humanity.

Now if Kenyatta and Ruto refuse to turn up for their trials, the court’s judges can request arrest warrants are issued for them. Also, their travel beyond sympathetic states in Africa and, importantly, China, would be restricted. They may face individual economic sanctions.

All of this risks turning Kenya into a fringe state similar to Sudan under President Omar Al Bashir, who has ignored his indictment at the ICC for more than four years. (Sudan, unlike Kenya, is not currently a signatory to the ICC; the warrant against Mr. Al Bashir was referred by the UN Security Council.)

But all this is increasingly irrelevant to Kenya’s leaders, and its people, says Ngunjiri Wambugu, director of a Nairobi think tank who supported the move to withdraw the country from the Hague court.

“There’s no way this motion would have got this far if there was not support for it at the very top, and I think Kenyans are not really that worried about international law at the moment,” he says.

“The conversation that’s going on here is that, yes, there may be no justice brought for the victims of the post-election violence, but if we pursued that justice would we compromise where we are now, in peace?," Mr. Wambugu asks, and answering his question offers that, “Yes, it is impunity and yes, it is unjust, but is it so important to go back six years and go into all that again? Or should we close that chapter and make it a memory that we don’t forget, but we don’t dwell on dangerously, either?”

Kenya’s decision to withdraw from the Rome Statute will not take effect for a year from the date that it officially applies to pull out. The country’s upper house of parliament, the Senate, will also need to ratify the motion, which it is expected to do. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to With its leaders facing trial, Kenya quits International Criminal Court
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2013/0906/With-its-leaders-facing-trial-Kenya-quits-International-Criminal-Court
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe