Abstract

Although the International Criminal Court (ICC) was examining some non-African situations by 2013, most of the Court’s indictees happened to come from African conflict situations. As will be discussed later, this state of affairs was worsened by the arrest warrant on President Omar Al-Bashir while he was then a sitting president. This made the African Union (AU) feel unfairly targeted and, therefore, contemplate withdrawal from the ICC. Some African leaders have also maintained slanderous charges against the ICC describing it in uncharitable identities and questioning its modus operandi. However, given that the Court was established to dispense international justice for the commission of core crimes, the AU’s contemplation of withdrawal evokes some pertinent questions regarding the future of justice on the continent should the AU eventually withdraw from membership of the Court. How justifiable is the AU withdrawal contemplation? Is this the best of options? What are the possible alternatives for the AU? How does the AU contemplation of withdrawal represent a conflict of interest? In which ways could the Court be strengthened to dispense the international justice for which it was established? In the wake of the aforementioned questions, this paper seeks to address the issue of how relevant the ICC is to the 21st century Africa and beyond. Dwelling on critical discourse analysis as a methodology, the paper employs interdisciplinary perspectives featuring reflections on research in human rights, international law, political science and other relevant areas of interest and speaks to such probing concerns. This paper concludes that though the challenges the AU raises against the ICC are reasonably admissible, they are not compelling enough to justify an AU withdrawal since they are not of the magnitude that deprives the Court of its capacity to dispense justice. This means that the Court remains relevant to the 21st century Africa and beyond. The paper ends by proposing a framework within which the AU could contribute towards making the Court more functional.