Africa

Within the organizational machine of the G7, G7 engagement groups are the form in which the G7 Presidency by interacting with the civil society builds trust with its citizens on their issues of concern. The African focus the Italian G7 Presidency gave to this year’s Think Tank Summit has specific reasons. Development of the African continent is a cross-cutting theme for the Italian Presidency and many African leaders have been invited to the forthcoming G7 Summit in Taormina for a G7 outreach session specifically devoted to innovation.

«[Quella in corso] è la più grave crisi umanitaria dalla fine della seconda guerra mondiale». A lanciare l’allarme sulla gravità della siccità in Africa orientale sono le Nazioni Unite. Un’emergenza che sta mettendo in ginocchio Paesi già colpiti severamente da guerre, crisi politiche, scontri etnici. «È una situazione terribile - ha detto Antonio Guterres, Segretario generale dell’Onu -, milioni di persone stanno sopravvivendo a stento. Sono obbligati a uccidere i loro pochi animali e ad alimentarsi con le sementi che avrebbero dovuto piantare la prossima stagione.

Twenty-three years ago, on the 6th of April, one of the greatest tragedies of contemporary history began. The Rwandan genocide, which took the lives of almost one million people in just about 100 days, occurred before the eyes of the world powers, whose representatives, impassive at the time, merely evacuated their personnel from the country and left the Rwandans to the mercy of the madness unleashed by a part of the population. 

The cases of Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and vice-President William Ruto, indicted at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity and, the former, also for genocide, marked a turning point for Africa’s continental engagement with the ICC.

In September, 2013 the Parliament voted to withdraw Kenya out of the ICC, being the second time it made this move. There is currently a bill pending in parliament seeking to repeal the ICC/Rome Statute’s implementation statute, the International Crimes Act. 

Yoweri Museveni likes to present himself as the frontman for an allegedly pan-African movement against the International Criminal Court (ICC). According to the Ugandan President, the ICC is responsible for “blackmailing” African states and is composed of “a bunch of useless people”. Yet, in early 2016, the Ugandan government ensured that Dominic Ongwen, a senior commander in the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), was surrendered to the Court. Ongwen’s arrival in The Hague marked a major victory for the fledgling ICC.

There is no doubt that never before in the still very short history of the ICC has the relationship between the Court, on one side, and the African Union (AU), representing the African states, on the other, been as tense as it has been for some months. I will not speak as a Judge here, otherwise I would have to be very constrained, because I would have to represent the Court’s policy; I want to speak directly from my experience avoiding hypocrisy and diplomacy and I guess that this is probably what is expected of my remarks.

At its Twelfth Ordinary Session in February 2009 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Assembly of the African Union requested the Commission of the African Union “in consultation with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, to examine the implications of the Court being empowered to try international crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes”.

Il 20 febbraio 2017 è diventato ufficiale: in Sud Sudan c'è una carestia. Secondo il comunicato emanato dal governo sud sudanese insieme alla FAO, al World Food Programme e all’UNICEF, circa 100.000 persone stanno morendo di fame in alcune aree dello stato di Unity, situato nel nord del paese e particolarmente colpito dai combattimenti che da dicembre 2013 vedono contrapporsi l'esercito governativo, i ribelli dell'SPLM/A-In-Opposition (SPLM/A-IO) e varie altre milizie sparse sul territorio.