Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Exploring the Cultural Legitimacy of the International Criminal Court



In January of this year I successfully defended my Ph.D thesis entitled “The Road to Reconciliation? Optimizing the Legitimacy and Efficacy of the International Criminal Court within the African Union and in Africa.” This book will be published in 2019. The stimulus for undertaking this piece of research was based on the fact that at some point all cases before the International Criminal Court had been opened exclusively in Africa. As a result the African Union over these past years regularly threatened mass withdrawal from the ICC on the basis of selective prosecution that had exacerbated ties between both institutions. Further developments included the failed Kenyan cases at the International Criminal Court where the Prosecutor was forced to drop charges against Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta for lack of evidence leading to a further deficit of legitimacy within the AU and in some parts of Africa. Other developments also saw South Africa formally deposit its instrument of withdrawal from the ICC as well as The Gambia and Burundi following suit. Given these developments and on hindsight this piece of research in my opinion has proven to be invaluable, actual and relevant over these past years.

While my book in effect explores three main deficit areas of the International Criminal Court’s legitimacy such as its institutional legitimacy, jurisdictional legitimacy and cultural legitimacy, if objectively viewed from beginning to end this piece of research weaves in aspects of culture as viewed from an African perspective that are at odds with international criminal law and thus in effect poses problems at the level of the ICC. So the book essentially focuses on the ways in which the Court can develop a better understanding of Africa, and advocates a practical approach to implementing a more culturally attuned way to enforcing international criminal justice. I would like to boldly add here that the issue of law and culture has never been explored from a perspective that merges most cultural conundrums that affect ICL, and more importantly by an African scholar such as myself, and while there are many wonderful authors who have explored the issue of culture and the law either from an anthropologically exclusive perspective or from an international legal perspective nobody has combined all these issues so comprehensively in a compilation on ICL and the ICC as yet. Credit must be given to the insights of authors such as Tim Kelsall, Rene Provost, Nancy Combs, David Rosen, Susan Shepler, Mark Drumbl, and Alison Rentelen amongst many others, whose wonderful work I am in awe of, and whose research has proven invaluable to my final insights in this book. The relevance of exploring culture in conjunction with international criminal law and human rights has ultimately been to contribute towards a more effective and optimistic cooperation between the Court and the African Union, and generally a better cooperation with Africa as well. I am proud to stress that the end goal of my research has thus been to facilitate reconciliation between the Court and the African Union, and by extension reconciliation with Africa in general.

For purposes of this blog post however, I will specifically cover the issue of cultural legitimacy which I address in detail in one portion of my book. There will be two additional blog posts that will focus on the remainder of my research namely the ICC’s institutional legitimacy and jurisdictional legitimacy, but for purposes of this present discussion I will zoom in on the cultural aspects that are at odds with with International Criminal Law.

Under the section of of cultural legitimacy in my book, I start off by exploring what would be the most culturally legitimate approach that the disciplines of human rights and international criminal law could adopt from a moral and ideological perspective. Here I delve into the debate on universalism and relativism and finally concede that a third way or middle way approach might be the most viable approach to increase popular support across a diversity of cultures both for human rights and ICL. A third way approach that I advocate for is one that commits to universal standards but at the same time takes cognisance of diversity, meaning that changing societal values must be taken into account in light of existing legislation in place. At the level of the judiciary, this would require a more teleological interpretation of the law instead of only the strict adherence to the literal letter of the law meaning that judges not only would need to be diverse but would need to represent a diversity of views. In other words judges would need to be open minded and culturally sensitive enough when adjudicating on the case in question. A third way approach would therefore be indicative of a pluralistic system that does not infringe on human rights or pivotal requirements of ICL but at the same time it would need to be flexible and practical enough to accommodate cultural pluralism.

At the level of the ICC this will speak to the multitude of constituencies that the ICC currently serves and more so to those that are deeply pluralistic societies such as African states parties and perhaps even Latin American states parties. In this way pluralism will ensure that the less dominant legal culture is protected against the dominant legal culture which arguably is the Western legal culture. Should the ICC for reasons of democracy and public policy take into account the reality of cultural diversity, and thus pluralism, it could garner more public support from its African constituents while still maintaining continued support from its Western constituency. Furthermore the benefits of pluralism for an accused would in turn mean that an accused’s right to culture is balanced with his right to a fair trial if cultural proclivities genuinely play a role in his/her case.

Aside from multiculturalism and pluralism a second area I explore are cultural paradigms that are currently facing the ICC. Here I have particularly delved into procedural and substantive aspects of ICL that are at odds with culture. Procedural problems take the form, where for instance witnesses from radically different cultural backgrounds are called upon to testify at the ICC, and linguistic diversity for instance poses a problem. Similarly I explore substantive aspects of of ICL such as the criminalising of certain acts as well as the definition of certain crimes that do not fit in to the 'mould' of another's cultural understanding of the act or crime in question that do pose a problem in ICL and subsequently also at the ICC. So cultural paradigms such as the genuine belief in magic, sorcery and witchcraft, differing cultural conceptions such as childhood, familial relationships, patrimony and sexual taboos although featuring often in international criminal trials have been overlooked or neglected because they cannot match up to or reconcile  with the “rational” disposition of judges and other legal professionals. These cultural paradigms if ignored can directly impact on the fairness of the trial and the quality of judicial determinations handed down especially when the mens rea of an accused becomes questionable.