The International Criminal Court (ICC) has authorized the Prosecutor to open investigations into allegations of war crimes in South Ossetia, Georgia in 2008. This is the first time the ICC has shifted its attention away from “weak” African nations and it will be interesting to see how it fares; if there will be a level playing field in seeking justice for victims as well as apportioning blame. Many things have been written about international criminal justice and one thing that most concur is that Africa received the raw deal. One glaring example is the fate of war criminals at the hands of the Appeals chamber of both the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia ICTY and that of Rwanda (ICTR). More than twenty years after the Genocide against the Tutsi, many perpetrators are still roaming freely in many Western capitals. Some of those who managed to pass through the tedious judicial process and convicted by the lower chambers of the ICTR, have seen their sentenced drastically reduced or acquitted all together. At the ICTY, the story is different as highlighted in the trial of two former Serbian security officials; Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović. The trial chamber acquitted them but the Appeals chamber was not satisfied and ordered a retrial. As if not to be outdone, just mid this month, the Dutch government agreed to a European Union request to set up a special court to try human rights violations that took place in Kosovo in the late 1990s. What this uneven “judicial wisdom” seems to imply is that it is OK to have Rwandan war criminals roaming about, but not Bosnians or Serbs who should have known better than to spill European blood.
