AU chief reiterates Africa position on ICC

January 25, 2011 (ADDIS ABABA) – The Chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC), Jean Ping has reiterated the African Union (AU) position on the International Criminal Court (ICC).

According to the AUC statement, Jean Ping made the remarks to Vice President of Kenya, Kalonzo Stephen Musyoka, bearer of a special message from President Mwai Kibaki from his office at AU Headquarters in Addis Ababa.

President Kibaki recalled that following the post-electoral violence in Kenya in 2008, the ICC at The Hague conducted preliminary investigations, out of concerns that the local judicial authorities lacked the capacity to do so.

Ping reiterated that the AU will continue to fight against impunity as required by Article 4 of the Constitutive Act and the relevant Assembly decisions and shall oppose any pretensions and double standards. The Commission believes and will continue to pursue the interconnected, mutually interdependent and equally desirable objectives of peace, justice and reconciliation.

With regards to Kibaki, Ping seized the opportunity to reiterate the AU position on the ICC, agreed to by AU Heads of State and Government in 2009 and laid out in previous AUC Communiqués, notably on 14 July 2009 and 29 August 2010.

The AU position was further restated by Ping on 9 July 2010, while receiving in his office in Addis Ababa, Judge Sang-Hyun Song, President of the ICC.

Ping restated that the AUC and AU Member States share the ICC’s unflinching commitment to combating impunity and promoting democracy, the rule of law and good governance on the continent as enunciated in the constitutive Act of the Union. The Commission favours a comprehensive approach in pursuit of justice and peace, neither of which should be pursued at the expense of the other.

Cognisant of the fact that according to the Rome Statute which established the ICC, the jurisdiction of the court is complementary to national criminal jurisdictions, and recognizing the improved national judicial environment created by Kenya’s new constitutional dispensation since August 2010, Kenya believes that it has the capacity to address the situation locally and not before the International Criminal Court.

Thirty one African countries are signatories to the Rome Statute which established the International Criminal Court (ICC).

(ST)