Just two months before the ICC Treaty went into force, the Bush administration official notified U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the United States was withdrawing from the International Criminal Court Treaty.
Quoting from their historical involvements in promotion of the rural of law, i.e., Involvement in creation of tribunals in Nuremburg, the Far East, and the international Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. They stated that the United States has always been in forefront in promotion of international justice.
The Administration stated that it believed that a properly created court could be useful tool in promoting human rights and holding the perpetrators of the worst violations accountable before the world.
But then argued that the International Criminal Court that has emerged from the Rome negotiations and that was going to start functioning in that year, 2002, would not effectively advance those worthy goals.
“ The ICC treaty, which goes into force on July 1, puts U.S. service members and officials at risk of prosecution by a court that is “ unaccountable to the American people and that has no obligation to respect the constitutional rights of our citizens, “According to then Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
First, they believed the ICC is an institution of unchecked power – “In the United States, our system of government is founded on the principle that, in the words of John Adams, “power must never be trusted without a check.” Unchecked power, our founders understood, is open to abuse, even with the good intentions of those who establish it.
USA stated that in the rush to create of a powerful and independent court in Rome, there was a refusal to constrain the Court’s power in any meaningful way. They argued that the final treaty had so many defects that they could not vote for it.
Their stand is that the ICC undermines the role of the United Nations Security Council of maintaining international peace and security. They believe in check and balances. The Rome statute creates a prosecutorial system that is an unchecked power.
U.S. argues that placing this kind of unchecked power in the hands of the prosecutor would lead to controversy, politicized prosecutions, and confusion. Instead, the U.S. argued that the Security Council should maintain its responsibility to check any possible excesses of the ICC prosecutor. Their arguments were rejected;and felt that the role of the Security Council was usurped.
The treaty creates an as-yet-to-be defined crime of “aggression” and again empowers the court to decide on this matter and lets the prosecutor investigate and prosecute this undefined crime. This was done despite the fact that the UN Charter empowers only the Security Council to decide when a state has committed an act of aggression. Yet the ICC, free of any oversight from the Security Council, could make this judgment.
Thirdly, they argue that the treaty threatens the sovereignty of the United States. The Court, as constituted today, claims the authority to detain and try American citizens, even though their democratically – elected representatives have not agreed to be bound by the treaty. – The United States has never recognized the right of an international organization to try their citizens who have committed crimes against humanity – absent of consent or a UN Security Council mandate.
Fourth, the current structure of the International Criminal Court undermines the democratic rights of their people and could erode the fundamental elements of the United Nations Charter, specifically the right to self-defense.
Fifth, the US believe that by putting U.S. officials, and their men and women in uniform, at a risk of politicized prosecutions, the ICC will complicate U.S. military cooperation with many-friends and allies who will now have a treaty obligation to hand over U.S. nationals to the Court – even over U.S. objections.
“The U.S. believes that the ICC is built on a flawed foundation. These flaws leave it open for For exploitation and politically motivated prosecutions. President Bush therefore has come to the conclusion that the United States could no longer be a party to this process.”
Bearing all this in your minds, should then our President, Mwai Kibaki, accent to a Parliamentary Bill, that demand our country withdrew from ICC Court Treaty?