On March 17, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin. The charges against him relate in particular to war crimes relating to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Added to war crimes is the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.
From a legal point of view, the question no longer arises whether Vladimir Putin is responsible or not if not in form and procedure. It is no secret, as the ICC itself states, that there are "reasonable grounds to believe that Vladimir Putin is personally responsible for these crimes". Worse, no one can hide the fact that, in Ukraine, civilian populations and civilian infrastructure are deliberately targeted. A new deal unprecedented in times of war that cannot be tolerated in any way and by any power whatsoever. The Westerners, and in particular the Americans, who are often and rightly blamed for excesses in their previous military actions, have never operated in this way.
With the war in Ukraine, the ICC seems to wake up overnight to suddenly realize that Vladimir Putin is responsible for war crimes. Just as if there had not been the war in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria where human butchery reached unspeakable proportions before the one that is now taking place in Ukraine before their eyes.
"The International Criminal Court must adopt an objective and impartial position, respect the jurisdictional immunity of heads of state under international law," said Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for Chinese diplomacy, following the decision of the ICC judges. If this position can echo as far as Africa where the heads of state of these weakest countries are often the easy victims of the ICC, it could not be otherwise when he continued by declaring on the eve of the visit of State from Chinese President Xi Jinping to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin: "The two parties (...) will practice genuine multilateralism, promote democracy in international relations, build a multipolar world, improve global governance and contribute to the development and progress of the world”. It is true that in terms of democracy, nothing is ever definitively acquired and that we can consider that each country is in the process of development. But from there, to make the world believe that China and Russia, openly hostile to the fundamental principles of Democracy, will promote democracy in international relations, would purely and simply amount to making an adult believe that Santa Claus really descends from the sky.
ICC arrest warrants only take effect when member countries agree to cooperate. The case of the former President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, is there to remind us of this. Despite the arrest warrant issued against him for the crime of genocide on March 4, 2009, he continued to travel in Africa and around the world (to Libya, Qatar, Egypt, Chad, Djibouti, Kenya, in China, South Africa, India, Russia…) with impunity until he was overthrown by a coup on April 11, 2019. And, the military junta in Sudan which promised to hand him over, has not done so to date.
Beyond the symbol, the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is only a sword stroke in the water. Even if, on the other hand, the crimes with which he is accused are well corroborated and substantiated. This institution based in The Hague, in the Netherlands, knows full well that it does not have the means to enforce its decision. And for good reason, by presidential decree of November 16, 2016, Russia had already declared to the ICC its “willingness (…) not to take part in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court”. In addition, the ICC has no coercive means capable of arresting and handing over to international justice the head of state of a nuclear power, moreover, a member of the UN Security Council. Even if we except the childish threats made to amuse the gallery of former President Dmitry Medvedev who talks about, if necessary, using all the capabilities, missiles and others, to bomb the Bundestag, the Chancellor's office and so on more…In short, bombard the whole Western world.
An ICC arrest warrant is not enough to change the course of the war in Ukraine, let alone the course of international relations. In reality, since its creation, the ICC has struggled to hide the tribulations and the inability of the UN to fully play its role of balanced governance on the international chessboard. Proof if it were still needed that the UN has long been completely obsolete and represents only a large empty shell. It deserves a major reform in which Africa must find the place that is theirs in proportion to its importance in the strategic and economic challenges of today and tomorrow. Not because it has an impressive number of nuclear warheads, but rather because neither the nuclear powers nor the great powers sitting on the UN Security Council are no longer legitimate to decide on their own the course of the world, ignoring royally a whole continent called Africa. Ensuring that Africa is fairly represented in the UN Security Council and in the governance of the world, even if no country on the continent has nuclear weapons, would be the first stone to be laid in order to "build a world multipolar, improve global governance and contribute to the development and progress of the world". And it is hardly by making the law of the jungle reign and by trampling on or "colonizing" African countries once again in all areas on the grounds that most of them are poor countries or " Shitty countries " of former US President Donald Trump that we will build a true multilateralism and a better world.
By Marcus Boni Teiga
