In the serene opulence of a five star hotel in the north of Zanzibar, a fierce battle about war crimes broke out. The protagonists – diplomats, activists and journalists – sported jeans and tee-shirts not battle fatigues and waved UN resolutions not kalashnikovs; but they held to their positions as firmly as any rebel leader or incumbent president. The subject under discussion was whether the indictments for murder served by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Sudan’s President Omer el Beshir would bring justice and peace to the beleaguered people of Darfur.
The hosts of this meeting, the Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and the Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation of Tanzania, have a big stake in the issue. They are trying to promote substantive negotiations in some of the most intractable conflicts in the world, so the effects of the ICC’s issuing of arrest warrants for heads of state and rebel leaders are a critical concern. It is an issue that has divided the growing conflict-resolution industry between those who see the ICC intervention as unwarranted Western interference in the affairs of sovereign states, and those activists who see the ICC as a critical means of holding war criminals to account.



The 30 African states which have signed the Rome Statutes establishing the ICC are the bedrock of the institution, whose judges include several distinguished African jurists. And it was the governments of the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda that first invited the ICC to investigate war crimes in their countries with the aim of prosecuting the perpetrators in the Hague. Then, some argued that issuing arrest warrants against the Lord’s Resistance Army for war crimes would obstruct the attempted peace talks with Uganda. 
In Kenya, local political debate is obsessed with how to bring to account those who sponsored the political violence which killed 1,500 people and chased another 300,000 from their homes in 2008. As part of the political accord last year, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was charged with handing a sealed envelope containing the names of 10 of the most important suspects behind the violence to the ICC – if the local politicians could not agree to establish a tribunal to deal with the cases locally. They have not, and the deadline is looming. 
Sudan’s position is more complex still. When the Khartoum regime expelled 13 aid agencies the day after the ICC issued the arrest warrant for President Omer, the opponents of the ICC warrant said the action had scuppered the peace talks and put at risk food aid for about 2.5m displaced people in Darfur. But the regime is quietly backtracking, allowing the affiliates of some of the expelled aid agencies to return, restarting the Darfur peace talks in Qatar, and signalling to Western governments that it will hold elections next year. The diplomatic game continues with or without the ICC, although the arrest warrant may change the balance of power. 



The failure of China, Russia and the US to join the ICC also undermines it. Suliman Baldo of the International Institute for Transitional Justice, who led the discussions in Zanzibar, said afterwards that some opponents of the ICC’s actions in Africa have legitimate concerns, but the bigger question concerned Africa’s commitment to holding those accused of war crimes to account. There would have to be a credible African alternative or perhaps supplement to the ICC’s efforts, Baldo suggested.


The same argument might apply to the myriad corruption cases across Africa. Although the prosecuting authorities in South Africa have dropped their cases centred on the country’s $6bn arms deal, state investigations into the deal and the role of Western companies and officials are continuing in Britain and Germany. They seem destined to result in the prosecution of companies and individuals in those European jurisdictions.


Similarly, the US, British and French investigations into corruption surrounding Halliburton’s $6bn gas plant in Nigeria implicate the business associates of former vice-president Dick Cheney and suggests that three former Nigerian heads of state were part of the US company’s criminal scheme. Yet there has been no serious investigation, let alone a prosecution, in Nigeria. Until that reaction changes, justice will continue to go offshore.