Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary (CS) Amina Mohammed has said three more countries are needed to sign up to a Kenyan-backed protocol to establish an African court to try crimes against humanity.
Ms Mohammed explained that 11 countries out of the required 14 had already signed the Malabo Protocol which was adopted and meant to set the course for the establishment of an African court of justice.
She said this after a meeting with her counterpart from Iran -Dr Mohammad Javad Zarif- where issues on how the two countries can continue collaborating were discussed.
“Kenya is not the only country that has pledged support. For this court to operate it needs resources and hence the pledges from different countries,” she said.
Expanded mandate
She pointed out that even without the presence of ICC, the step to set up an African court would have been a natural one.
She pointed out that: “There exists a court already -African Court of Justice and Human Rights- but what we are trying to do is expand its mandate to enable it to handle different kinds of crime including crimes against humanity.”
During the summit, President Uhuru Kenyatta urged other African leaders to support the setting up of an African Court of Justice that is run and funded by Africa.
President Kenyatta described the continent’s relationship with the ICC, which he said “poses a grave risk to peace and security not only in Africa, but to the whole world.”
He said that from its handling of the Kenyan cases, ICC had progressively breached the Rome Statute’s critical cornerstones of complementarity, admissibility, threshold and gravity.
“Observe and you will see the court has unfortunately become more vulnerable to blatantly politicised designs,” he said.
