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When he was first elected in 2013, Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and his racing partner William Roto were awaiting prosecution in the International Criminal Court. They were charged with crimes against humanity in connection with the post-election violence that shook Kenya after the election in December 2007. After taking office, the two began a campaign that was ultimately successful, using national resources to intimidate witnesses and obstruct the court from dropping the charges against them.
Now in the final year of his final term, Kenyatta seems to plan to end his term the way he started: the country loses its temper again on the international stage and tries to bully another international court.
Just a few days before the International Court of Justice is about to make a judgment on the maritime border dispute filed by Somalia, the Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Announce The country is “withdrawing its recognition of the court’s compulsory jurisdiction” and announced that it “will no longer be under the jurisdiction of an international court or tribunal without its express consent.” By doing so, Kenya has become one of many UN member states that have withdrawn from the International Court of Justice, including the United States.
The withdrawal is Kenya’s latest move to impose its will on Somalia and block international rulings against Somalia. dispute On a narrow 100,000 square kilometers (38,200 square miles) triangular sea shelf, it is believed to contain large amounts of oil and natural gas. After five years of compromise negotiations, Somalia finally filed a lawsuit in 2014, which aroused the dissatisfaction of the Kenyatta government.
In 2019, Kenya recalled its ambassador to Somalia after claiming that the Somali government had auctioned off oil and gas from the disputed area at a meeting in London, even though Kenya itself had sold mining licenses to international companies in the triangle. The country also threatened to close camps hosting hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees and forced them to return to the border, warning that “the patience of the Kenyan people is not unlimited”. It has taken a series of actions, including prohibiting Somali officials from entering the country and stopping direct flights from Mogadishu to Nairobi, in order to force Somalia to withdraw the case.
At the same time, in the court itself, the situation in Kenya is not going well. Kenya lost its challenge to the authority of the International Court of Justice to decide the case in 2017 because the two countries had previously agreed to an out-of-court settlement.Earlier this year, Kenya Refuse to participate In the oral proceedings after the court rejected its application to postpone the hearing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is after the International Court of Justice approved three previous requests for delay, which delayed the case for more than a year.
The desperate move to prevent the case from proceeding may indicate the weakness of the Kenyan case. Obviously, Somalia seems to have more confidence in the prospects of the two in court, and the court is expected to make a verdict on October 12.
Kenyatta seems to be dusting his script from his battle with the International Criminal Court, where he made history as the first head of state to sit on the pier. At that time, Kenya was trying to get the UN Security Council to postpone the prosecution, threatening to withdraw from the “Rome Treaty” that established the court, and trying to plan a large-scale strike in African countries, accusing the racial court-hunting.
Coupled with the domestic campaign to find prosecution witnesses and silence them and refuse to cooperate with the court, the case broke down. The campaign against the International Criminal Court is full of half-truths about the nature of court prosecutions (many of which were initiated by African countries), unsubstantiated claims that Kenyan authorities are investigating Kenyatta and Ruto, and about court prosecutions It’s obvious that the Kenyan Constitution does not allow prosecution of the President.
Similar efforts have been launched against the International Court of Justice. Kenya has claimed that the appearance of one of the 11 judges of the International Court of Justice, the former President of the Court, and the Somali citizen Abdulqawi Yusuf (Abdulqawi Yusuf) on the bench will inevitably bias the case. In addition, the Kenyan media and social media are spreading an alarmist and clearly false narrative that Somalia’s victory will effectively make Kenya a landlocked country.
But perhaps the most harmful is Kenyatta’s unethical, cynical, and transactional direction in promoting Kenya’s relations with international institutions. When organized civil society opposed his ICC conspiracy at home, his government was one of the few governments that chose to vote against a historic resolution that recognizes and protects the role of human rights defenders in the United Nations General Assembly.
In the African Union, he not only undermined the consensus against impunity for public officials, but he also cynically pushed Israel to obtain observer status, despite its oppression of the Palestinians. For the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, when the domestic courts did not give him what he wanted, he was expressing his contempt for the domestic courts.
Ultimately, there is a price to be paid for destroying international institutions. The poor performance in the African Union, the United Nations, and The Hague has damaged many relationships that have been (and will take) years to repair. In addition, despite the possible flaws and limitations of the international order, it does provide an important framework for holding countries (and the elites who manage them) accountable and resolving disputes between them without resorting to the dictatorship of the strongest. By restricting national actions, international institutions help to consolidate international laws and norms, not only to protect the country, but more importantly, to protect the vulnerable groups within the country.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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