Assessment of the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor Role in Darfur Crisis, Sudan (the case of Omer Al-Bashir)

Abstract

In various countries throughout the world when rebel groups make an attack on innocent civilian and commit gross human rights violation, it is not punishable by the national courts.  However, in 1998 a grounding breaking idea turned into reality, and 50 years of debate ended as the first International Criminal Court was established as a result of the Rome Statute. The Court entertains or investigates different crimes which are committed in its member’s sates across the world. However, the writers of this paper prefer the situation in Darfur; the case of Al Basher is selected as a context to discuss the role of the ICC Prosecutor. This is mainly preferred because Sudan has been the first situation referred by the Security Council since the ICC was established and the state concerned Sudan is not a party to the Rome Statute, therefore this situation has its particularities compared with others.  In spite of this a lot of controversies and misconceptions are being witnessed on the understandings and implementation of international laws in Africa between ICC and African leaders. Basically, the controversy and misconception is not something emanates from the vacuum rather they are generated from various prevailing thoughts. African states accuse ICC as a neo colonialist institution targeting African leaders in addition to alleging ICC as playing double standard role in African and the rest of the world for instance ICC prosecution till now only in Africa in spite of Israel-Palestine and Afghanistan where the western countries have major interest from the conflict. Hence, the analysis of role the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor in Darfur Crisis, Sudan (the case of Omer Al-Bashir) is centered in line with main objective of the establishing Rome Statue in July 2002 which thrives that all member states of UN have to have the same standard in their respective territories.