Response to Nadia Banteka: "The ICC Prosecutor should stick to her legal job; politics will only add more to the current criticism against the Court".

Hi Nadia, I enjoyed reading your article and find it really interesting. To add to some of your points, here is what I think:

I doubt that “The pursuit of international justice” is an international interest of any State on its own. Be this at the internal or the international level. Instead, I think based on a realtpolitics reading that international justice is more often used as a means to achieve a State interest at the international level. The correlation between the quest for international justice of the EU and its cooperation in the arrest of ICTY indicted individuals is quite illustrative of this. In this sense, EU members States intervened mainly because they were fearing for their borders security and their commercial interests although they publicly use the concept of the quest for the international justice in that Region. Also, the same discourse is valid with the USA intervention in the arrest of ICTY figutives. The USA's alliances with other NATO's members States, and the will to maintain its leadership in the Region were the main reasons for its intervention.

Based on your reasoning, drawing similarities between the ICTY's situation and the ICC would prove quite unfeasible. As we all know that, conditionalities (East European State's accession to the EU was one of the conditions to cooperate in the arrest and surrender of suspects) and the quest to play a major political role in the region while curtailing the Russian influence (as far the USA cooperation is concerned) were among the most important priorities of major States in that situation in the ICTY case. Clearly enough, I will add that major States did not intervene in Rwanda during the genocide not because they did not want to see international justice and peace be kept but because their interest were not threatened.

I also doubt that “In tandem, these third states may come to find that such a positive cooperation may turn out to be particularly effective in seizing utility and maximizing their international payoffs as global/regional key players”. We are living a new era in which China is becoming one of the most important trade actors (China's exports of gas from Sudan have grown impressively during the last years after Omar Al Bashir indictment). Are we really sure that EU member States that are individually commercial partners of many African States will be keen to disregard their interests and support the lovely cause of “international justice”? In addition, I don't know any African States that is requesting accession to the EU.

I would not mind asking myself more than one question:
The Court (or mainly the OTP) has always been targeted as a an anti African institution as it is going only against African delinquents. Are we suggesting that the OTP should gain more political backing from the most powerful States (that is any State that has an interest to inflence the political stability of Africa) to gain her arrest and surrender?
In addition, I thought and it has always been the ICC Prosecutor's policy to claim her non political affiliation. Are begging the Prosecutor and the Court (that is the maximal judicial institution) to engage in politics? As the ICC Prosecutor have claimed in the past, there are international institutions more equiped to play international politics such as the UN, the EU, the AU and others.

That said,
I always think that untill international justice or the trial of international crimes will be seen as a “western / imported” solution into the problems of any State, arrest will always remain a great challenge. The current perception nowadays while discussing with many fellow Africans that are not expert of ICL is that the average man knows that the fight against international crimes means “Westerns coming to target some African leaders!”
If we keep the arrest debate to “what can we impose to them to get them turn their criminals?; at the end of the day, States are sovereign and no westerrn State will get into an African State to arrest an indicted individual. I don't really see any major success.
But if the question becomes “how can we make a populution understand that the society should punish international criminals no matter who they are? I think we have a completely win-win situation. In fact, parents often call the police to arrest their sons who have committed a crime not because they are afraid they will be arrested themselves but mainly because of the belief that there are certain values that should be protected in a society. To extend this reasoning to multicultural societies, at times parents will have a very bad perception of the governing authorities if they think their ethnies are not part of the governing bodies but will still cooperate with the police to punish their delinquent son. That is, even an African man that percieves the international system (in which the ICC operates) as unfair will cooperate to arrest and punish an international criminal if he internally thinks that the delinquent has breached the most important social value.

I am sure that there is no social group that is essentially inclined to commit crimes. Informing and educating the public (not to be confused with educating the salvage!) should be a key to make any world's citizen understand the importance of fighting international crimes by any means.