On April 5, the USA revoked the visa of the International Criminal Court’s lead prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, for her attempts to open research into alleged war crimes committed by the U.S. In Afghanistan. A week later, judges at the ICC rejected Bensouda’s request to open an investigation into U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
While rights advocates condemned this move as amounting to U.S. Interference within the workings of the ICC, it’s more alarming than mere obstruction, and is rooted inside the present hierarchy and embedded colonial structures in worldwide felony justice. Bensouda’s visa revocation underscores the prevailing systematic inequality in the worldwide prison order. This is rooted within the presumed hierarchy via a group of elite nations that have ruled the worldwide order from assumed racial, cultural, political, ancient, cloth, monetary, and felony superiority. These tendencies are available in light of comments made by way of the Trump administration’s national security advisor, John Bolton, who delegitimized the position of the ICC in a speech he delivered in September 2018. He stated that “the U.S. will take any means essentially” to triumph over “unjust prosecution by way of this illegitimate Court.”
Countries just like the U.S. have usually enjoyed dominance through this presumed superiority, enabling them to suggest other countries are like-minded in terms of the international felony order. The U.S. and other powerful international locations have been successful in maintaining the status quo of imbalance inherent in international regulation, but have also been instrumental in establishing the guidelines governing that legal order.
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With tectonic political shifts internationally, the ICC’s representatives – and jurists like Bensouda – represent a number of the final vestiges of resisting the dominant global felony order by attempting to hold the West responsible for its transgressions in the global South. Unfortunately, the Court’s unwillingness to transport beyond its imperial roots is clear from the choice to reject Bensouda’s request. The ICC has blatantly redefined the notion of “justice” and has been preoccupied with African states whilst turning a blind eye to similarly critical crimes committed with the aid of the U.S.
