Politics
Kenya: Parliament votes to withdraw from ICC – an angry snub of The Hague-based tribunal
Kenyatta, who was elected president earlier this year, faces trial in November. Both leaders have said they will cooperate with the court. The country’s parliament has voted to withdraw before, but the executive branch took no action. The Rome Statute says a “state party” may withdraw with written notification to the U.N.’s secretary-general; withdrawal takes effect one year later.
If Kenya were to withdraw, it would be the first nation to do so.
Kenyatta’s and Ruto’s indictments led the United States and European powers like the U.K. to openly advocate for the two leaders’ electoral defeat. When the two were declared the winners in March’s election with 50.03 percent of the vote, both countries gave only lukewarm congratulations. However, U.S. and U.K. relations with Kenya since then have appeared to be at least “normal”, though when U.S. President Barack Obama embarked on a tour of Africa in June and July he did not visit Kenya, his father’s home country.
The ICC has only indicted Africans, a fact that has opened the court to severe criticism on the continent. The chairman of the African Union earlier this year said that ICC prosecutions “have degenerated into some kind of race hunt.”
The ICC stepped in to investigate Kenya’s postelection violence after the country failed to prosecute any of the organizers of the attacks. Kenya suffered two months of post-election violence that dented the country’s reputation as a stable democracy, however, the country has worked very hard in the last five years to correct the mistakes that led to the violence, and is now one of the fastest growing economies on the African continent.
Sources: Associated Press, Daily Nation
