Maria Mabinty Kamara, the International Criminal Court outreach coordinator for Kenya, has defended the ICC as an imperial post-colonial tool against Africans.
Kamara said Kenya believed in the ideals, missions and visions of the Rome Statue when it ratified it on June 1, 2005.
She told The Standard on Sunday that three out of the seven African cases being heard at The Hague were initiated upon referrals by host countries. Kamara said the ICC does not have the mandate to initiate in a non-state parties, unless it is referred to it by the United Nations Security Council as was the case with Libya and Sudan.
“But Ugandan authorities signed the declaration inviting ICC to initiate investigations into the Lord’s Resistance Army conflict in northern Uganda, the same to DR Congo and the Central African Republic governments in the context of armed conflict in 2004,” she explained.
Kamara, however, noted that the Prosecutor was at liberty to initiate investigations within partner states on his own as was with Kenya.
She said Ivory Coast’s government, once a non-state party to the Rome Statute, equally signed the treaty, willingly inviting investigations.
“The ICC operates on the principle of complementarity and only steps if its statutes have been violated by party states,” she disclosed.