The early 20th century Shakespeare scholar, A.C. Bradley, argued that the tragic hero must possess an inner flaw which will become the inevitable source of his failure. The higher his worldly status, the more poignant his downfall. This week, 100 years later, the member states that make up the International Criminal Court and oversee its administration are meeting in New York. They are discussing the budget, electing new judges, instituting mechanisms for paying reparations to victims, and inaugurating a policy on sexual and gender-based crimes. But there’s an elephant in the room: Kenya – the country whose actions have highlighted a similar flaw at the heart of the ICC.
Last week, Fatou Bensouda, the chief Prosecutor, was forced to abandon her case against Kenya’s current president, Uhuru Kenyatta. In 2011, two years before he was elected president, Kenyatta was indicted by the ICC for orchestrating murder, rape and deportations following the earlier elections of 2007. More than a thousand people died during that melee. For years, the government promised to hold national trials. When they failed to deliver, the ICC stepped in.
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