17 Apr 2013

Foreign affairs and international cooperation minister, Mr Phandu Skelemani has said Botswana’s move to ratify Kampala amendments will inspire other African states to follow suit.

Officially closing a two-day workshop on the ratification of the Kampala Amendments to the Rome Statute of the ICC on April 16, Mr Skelemani said the ratification of the Kampala amendments relating to the crime of aggression was as important as the ratification of the Rome Statute.

He added that the state parties would be instrumental in assisting the court to execute its mandate by criminalising the crime of aggression at the domestic level. He called on the civil society to participate and encourage state parties of their respective countries to ratify the Kampala amendments.

Minister Skelemani expressed gratitude to the government of the Principality of Liechtenstein and the Global Institute for Prevention of Aggression for working closely with African states in making the workshop a success.

Meanwhile, the Vice President of the ICC, Judge Sanji Monageng said the ICC required at least 30 ratifications from African states in order to criminalise and activate its jurisdiction over the crime of aggression.

She said in an interview that Botswana was the only country out of the 33 African states that signed the ratification on the implementation of the Kampala Amendments to the Rome Statute.

She said once activated, the court’s jurisdiction over the crime would provide some measures of criminal accountability at the international level for the crime since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trails.

She said activating the court’s jurisdiction over the crime would help deter illegal use of force, as leaders would have to take the court’s jurisdiction into account when taking relevant decisions.

The crime of aggression was included in the list of crimes under the jurisdiction of the court during the 2010 Kampala Review Conference. The other three were genocide, crime against humanity and war crimes.

Judge Monageng explained that the criminalisation of aggression through the Rome statute, once fully activated, would protect the right of individual soldiers.

She explained that currently, the Rome Statute did not protect the life of combatants who were unlawfully sent to war, nor the right to life of the soldiers of the attacked state as they were deemed to be legitimate targets who maight be killed at will, provided the relevant rules pertaining to the conduct of hostilities were followed.

She said this was a serious loophole in international law that needs to be closed before the 2017 deadline when the ICC was expected to start implementing the amendment.

Asked if it was true that the ICC only targets African stated, Judge Monageng said it was just a question of perception because the ICC implemented the mandate given to it by member states adding that with more education, she was optimistic that African states would ultimately agree to rectify the amendment and cooperate with the court.

The domestic criminalisation of the crime of aggression did by no means begin with the Kampala Review Conference. Several states parties, as well as non-state parties, already had domestic provisions criminalising aggression prior to the review conference that may overlap with the Kampala definition of the crime of aggression. ENDS