Unpacking the Tension Between the African Union and the International Criminal Court: the Way Forward

It has been asserted that the international criminal justice regime anchored on the complementarity of the international criminal court (ICC) could be undermined by distrust, much of which stems from Africa’s historical experience with the slave trade and colonialism. 1 This contention seems well-founded, as the ICC is widely perceived as selective and biased against Africa. The perception appears to be justified by the fact that, although the ICC has the potential to cover all states, whether they are party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court or not, it has only African cases before it, even after utilising all the means by which it may be seized of jurisdiction. As a result, Africans are portrayed as being exclusively responsible for all of humanity’s inhumanity. Relations between the ICC and the African Union (AU) deteriorated from cooperation to conflict following the indictment of President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir of Sudan for crimes against humanity and genocide. The basis for the tension seems to have been the involvement of the United Nations Security Council (hereafter ‘Security Council’) in the referral of the situation in Darfur, Sudan to the ICC and its subsequent refusal to defer the case, as requested by the AU. Nevertheless, the relationship is still salvageable and could be enhanced for