African Court of Justice

Max du Plessis, Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.  He is an Associate Professor, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban; Senior Research Associate, International Crime in Africa Programme, Institute for Security Studies; and a Barrister, South Africa. At their latest African Union (AU) Assembly meeting, held in July, African Heads of State were asked to adopt a draft amended protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights (hereafter ‘African Court’) which would have expanded the jurisdiction of the African Court to include the competence to prosecute individuals for international crimes. The draft protocol would have created an International Criminal Law Section of the African Court with criminal jurisdiction over the international crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as several transnational crimes such as, terrorism, piracy, and corruption. Thankfully, the Heads of States decided not to adopt the amended protocol at that meeting and to postpone consideration of this proposal. Of course, we…