Providence

Let's start with our first story.

We were seeing Chad announcing his withdrawal from the International Criminal Court.

I mean, the International Criminal Court was set up to ensure that leaders who leaders, individuals, but mostly political holders who abuse office, especially on human rights issues to address issues of genocide.

I feel this was also to make governments sit up to ensure that during their regime that you don't have instances of human rights violations and other things.

But now we have Chad exiting from the International Criminal Court.

I mean, on the one hand, you're saying, what is Chad scared about? That's one question you're trying to ask.

What are you scared about? Why are you living? But I mean, it would be good to hear your perspective on the reason why they are leaving.

Was there anything that led to this? Were they also, let's say, requests from Chad to say the ICC needs to stop doing this in order for us to maintain? Or they just woke up one day and decided to leave? And what do you think this exit means? for the fight against human rights abuses, which is very, very key, especially in Africa.

Yeah, all right.

I think it is important to begin with in the topic of background concepts.

African country that has left.

Very recently, we saw Mali announce its exit.

But before that, I think it is important for us to understand the development of I think about 25 countries, a lot of them were South African countries in 1998.

And within that period, the context was that African states and many countries of the Global South were coming off the backs of civil wars.

and uh you know a lot of crisis after just a few decades old from independence which is even more true in africa and west africa particularly where we've had the liberian war we had the syrian civil war they've had many crews but human rights abuses.

It abused basically children and other people in the walls.

I think that's the period when the rogue status was signed.

You had the first civil war breaking out not too long after.

And so the West, which pushed a deterrence against people who would do war crimes and then to piggyback off the what Nuremberg Tribunal did and bringing people who committed crimes during World War II, especially the Germans, to account.

So a lot of African countries were got convinced to join the court by being a part of it, while many of these other countries, especially in the West, they practically stayed out.

The Americans being chief for the most important example, the Chinese also stayed out, Israel also stayed out, and I'll come to that very importantly very soon.

So, the ICC are smaller countries without that much diplomatic heft and diplomacy class on the international stage.

And the big players, who would rather get them to sign off, simply sit out, you know.

So we had, for instance, in the US, in December 2000, President Clinton signed for American President Bush Jr. came in and signed it in May of that year.

And then after that, you had the U.S. Congress pass the American Service Members Protection Act that authorizes the use of force to shot American or allied personnel from the Hague custody.