Abstract
This Article identifies an emerging regime complex in the field of international criminal law and analyzes the development of the regional criminal chamber to the African Court of Justice and Human Rights. A regime complex refers to the way in which two or more institutions intersect in terms of their scope and purpose. This Article discusses how the International Criminal Court’s institutional crisis created a space for regional innovation. It demonstrates how the development of a regional criminal tribunal in Africa is the result of intersecting factors in international criminal justice. It finds that regime complexes can form not only due to strategic inconsistencies as discussed in the literature, but also because of the influence of regional integration. It argues that the regionalization of international criminal law is a useful addition to the field of international criminal justice, which has hitherto been hampered by the limitations of both domestic and international adjudication. This Article concludes that regionalization of international criminal law is a positive development.
Highlights
The African Union (AU) adopted an instrument in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea to create the firstever regional criminal tribunal in May of 2014.2 The court has not come into existence at the time of writing
It demonstrates how the development of a regional criminal tribunal in Africa is the result of intersecting factors in international criminal justice. It finds that regime complexes can form due to strategic inconsistencies as discussed in the literature, and because of the influence of regional integration. It argues that the regionalization of international criminal law is a useful addition to the field of international criminal justice, which has hitherto been hampered by the limitations of both domestic and international adjudication
As Hilary Charlesworth has articulated, this has led to the deprioritization of “issues of structural justice that underpin everyday life.”11 International criminal law essentially ignores quotidian crimes, which may undermine the effectiveness of the field because it “abstracts crises”12 from the root causes of the field’s core crimes—genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity
Summary
The African Union (AU) adopted an instrument in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea to create the firstever regional criminal tribunal in May of 2014.2 The court has not come into existence at the time of writing. Because almost all of the ICC’s cases are from the continent, and the court is completely dependent on member states for cooperation and enforcement of its decisions, the current strained relationship between the AU and the ICC is potentially deeply problematic for the larger project of international criminal justice This is especially so considering that Kenya received support for a proposal at a January 2016 AU summit meeting for mass African state withdrawal from the Rome Statute regime.. Regime complex and regionalism theory help to explain the AU’s decision to merge the African Court of Human and People’s Rights with that of the African Court of Justice, and add a separate chamber for criminal jurisdiction to the new African Court of Justice and Human Rights.34 This Article is organized as follows: Part I provides a brief background on the ICC, the African human rights architecture, the ICC’s institutional crisis, and the development of the regional criminal tribunal. SEC. 171 (2013). 33Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights, July 21, 2008 (entered into force Feb. 11, 2009) [hereinafter Merger Protocol]. 34See generally Malabo Protocol, supra note 2
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