When Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir became the first sitting head of state indicted by the International Criminal Court, reactions in Africa were mixed. Some victims cheered the prospect of accountability, but many on the continent saw something unsettling: yet another African leader in the dock of a court far away in Europe. Over two decades, the ICC has trained its sights disproportionately on Africa – charging politicians and warlords from Sudan, Kenya, Libya, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo and beyond – while seeming to ignore equally grave crimes elsewhere. This lopsided pattern has fueled accusations that the court is less an impartial tribunal of global justice and more a neo-colonial institution targeting “weak” states, especially in Africa, at the behest of powerful nations. Today, that perception has set off a powerful backlash, with African governments questioning the ICC’s credibility and even seeking homegrown alternatives to do justice on their own terms.
At the heart of African criticism is a glaring contradiction between the ICC’s universal mandate and the reality of global power politics. The court was founded to ensure that no atrocity goes unpunished, no matter who commits it. In practice, however, the ICC has almost exclusively prosecuted individuals from smaller or politically vulnerable countries – a vast majority of them African – while leaders from powerful states have acted with virtual impunity. It has not escaped notice in African capitals that Western nations and their allies have been largely immune to ICC scrutiny. The United States and China are not even ICC members, shielding their officials from prosecution. Even when Western actors fall under the court’s jurisdiction, justice advances at a snail’s pace or not at all. Long-running inquiries into possible war crimes by US forces in Afghanistan or British troops in Iraq were quietly pared down or closed without charges, reinforcing the sense of a double standard. To many observers in Africa, it seemed the ICC would boldly pursue rebel commanders in Congo or politicians in Kenya, but lose its nerve when confronted with atrocities linked to Washington, London, or other global powers.
That double standard has been deeply corrosive. African leaders point to it as evidence that international justice is selectively applied – a victor’s justice where mightier nations never face the courtroom. This feeds into a broader narrative that resonates on the continent: the idea that the ICC serves as a tool of neo-colonial influence. The optics alone have been damaging. The court sits in The Hague, a world away from the communities it claims to serve, and it is largely funded and staffed by Western countries. In the popular imagination, it starts to look like a modern replay of colonial-era courts, where white European judges once sat in judgment of colonized Africans. Is it any wonder that more and more African commentators have started to openly ask if the ICC is truly impartial, or if it is “a colonial court for Africa” in all but name?
Specific cases only heighten these suspicions. The indictments of Sudan’s al-Bashir and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, both issued with strong Western backing, were seen by some as politically driven – a convenient way to pressure or remove defiant African rulers under the guise of law. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s prosecution for post-election violence (alongside his deputy William Ruto) led to a groundswell of regional solidarity, with many in Kenya and across Africa arguing that the ICC was humiliating their leaders and undermining national sovereignty. Even Ivory Coast’s former president Laurent Gbagbo, who actually stood trial in The Hague, became something of a cause célèbre after he was acquitted; Ivorians asked why he had to spend years in a foreign jail awaiting justice for a case that ultimately collapsed. Each of these episodes reinforced the perception that the ICC’s hand falls heaviest on Africa, while Western misdeeds are given a pass.
As these grievances accumulated, African governments began pushing back in earnest. The African Union repeatedly decried the ICC’s “Africa bias” and, at one point, even called for a mass withdrawal of African states from the court’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute. While a wholesale pullout never materialized, the threat itself was a clear signal of continent-wide frustration. A few countries did take concrete steps: Burundi became the first nation to withdraw from the ICC in 2017, and others like South Africa and Kenya have flirted with the idea in their parliaments and courts. The message from Africa has been loud and clear – justice yes, but not at the cost of our dignity or sovereignty. In the eyes of many Africans, the ICC had come to symbolize an unfair and selective international system, where law is wielded against certain nations but not others.
This dissatisfaction has also spurred Africa to explore its own mechanisms for international justice. As early as 2014, the African Union proposed expanding the African Court of Justice and Human Rights (through what’s known as the Malabo Protocol) to grant it jurisdiction over crimes like genocide and war crimes. The idea was to create a regional court that could prosecute atrocities without having to rely on The Hague. Although that protocol has been slow to gain the necessary ratifications to come into force, it represents a desire for African solutions to African problems – including the problem of impunity. More recently, a bold new initiative emerged from the Sahel region. In 2025, the governments of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger announced the creation of the Sahel International Court of Justice and Human Rights, intended as an alternative to the ICC. This court – also referred to by its French acronym CPS-DH – is envisioned to try war crimes, crimes against humanity, and human rights violations on African soil, free from what its founders consider the political biases of the ICC. Its proponents argue that over 70% of ICC cases have targeted Africans while well-documented crimes by Western powers (in places like Iraq or even Libya itself) have gone unpunished. The new Sahel tribunal, they say, will put African interests first and ensure no outside political agendas meddle in judgments. Whether such a regional court can succeed or gain broader African Union support remains to be seen, but its mere establishment is telling. It signifies a profound loss of faith in the current international justice system and a willingness among some African states to chart a different path.
Meanwhile, global events continue to validate many of Africa’s complaints about the ICC. Even the United States – historically one of the court’s fiercest critics – has inadvertently underscored the notion of selective justice. When the ICC dared to consider investigating potential war crimes by U.S. personnel in Afghanistan, Washington reacted with fury. In 2020, it went so far as to impose sanctions and travel bans on ICC officials (including then-Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda), an extraordinary rebuke that left the court looking beleaguered. Washington’s stance was blunt: it declared the ICC politicized and illegitimate whenever its investigations crossed certain red lines. This hostility continued in various forms, and by 2025 even U.S. judges and prosecutors at the ICC were being sanctioned by a U.S. administration that saw the court as a threat to its sovereignty. For African observers, this was the ultimate proof of double standards. Powerful countries not only refuse to cooperate with the ICC – they actively sabotage it if it comes after them or their allies. And yet, the ICC has never mustered anything close to such resolve when pursuing Western wrongdoers. It reinforced what Africans had felt for years: international justice will bend in the face of great power, but remain rigid when dealing with Africa.
Beyond the politics of who gets prosecuted, Africans have also experienced inequities in how justice is delivered after a trial.
There have been disturbing instances of African defendants who were acquitted or who served their sentences, yet remained in custody for years because no country would host them after release. Unlike European war crimes suspects who often return home to open arms or at least find a country willing to accept them, some Africans literally have nowhere to go. In one notable example, a group of Rwandan men acquitted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ended up living under guard in a “safe house” in Tanzania for a long period, because their home country or other states refused to take them in. Similarly, a Congolese ex-militia leader who was cleared by the ICC struggled to secure permission to leave detention, since going back to his homeland was perilous and no other nation stepped forward. This inequity stems partly from political realities – an acquitted person might still be seen as an enemy by their home government – but the result is a two-tier system. African ex-defendants languish in limbo or under house arrest abroad, while Western defendants (in the rare cases they’re involved at all) can count on stronger diplomatic and logistical support. Such outcomes violate the basic principle of fairness and human rights, adding another layer to African grievances. It is a cruel irony that a court ostensibly devoted to justice can’t guarantee freedom and safety to individuals it has found not guilty. For critics, this is yet another example of how the international justice system, as currently run, consistently fails Africans.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC’s first prosecutor, long dismissed the notion of an “African bias” as nonsense. He insisted that the court was simply targeting the worst crimes, and it just happened that many were in Africa. He even argued that those calling the ICC neo-colonialist were often powerful African figures trying to deflect from their own misdeeds – pointing, for instance, to Sudan’s al-Bashir, who indeed tried to rally African opposition to his indictment by branding it Western persecution. Ocampo famously retorted that he “would not apologize for protecting African victims,” casting the ICC as on the side of Africa’s people against their abusive leaders. But that defense rang hollow to many after it emerged that the United Nations Security Council’s referral of Sudan to the ICC (the case that led to al-Bashir’s indictment) came with a catch: the ICC was explicitly barred from investigating officials from non-member countries in Darfur – a clause meant to shield any American personnel or other foreign nationals involved in Sudan. In other words, when the chance arose to include possible crimes by Western actors in an African conflict, the ICC quietly agreed to look the other way. This kind of arrangement, critics argue, exposes the court’s implicit bias. Ocampo’s lofty words about neutrality failed to convince those who saw how political considerations shaped the court’s reach. Over the years, allegations of bias have only gained traction. For example, the ICC decided not to press forward with a full investigation into alleged abuses by British forces in Iraq, despite voluminous evidence compiled by its own prosecutors. And in the Afghanistan probe, when push came to shove, the court essentially dropped the pursuit of U.S. or NATO-related crimes and focused only on atrocities by the Taliban and other insurgents. Each decision followed intense pressure and lobbying by powerful states – and each has made the ICC look more and more like a biased referee, one that won’t blow the whistle on the rich and mighty, only on the usual suspects.
Nothing illustrates the imbalance in international justice more starkly than the contrasting responses to conflicts in Europe versus the Middle East. In 2022, when war erupted in Ukraine, the ICC moved with uncharacteristic speed and zeal. Its prosecutor opened an investigation into Russian atrocities, and within a year the court issued high-profile arrest warrants (even for Russia’s sitting head of state).
Western countries poured millions of dollars into the ICC’s coffers to support the Ukraine case, and there was talk of special tribunals and global task forces – a full-court press to ensure accountability. Many applauded this as a triumph of justice over politics. But then consider the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. For years, Palestinians have alleged war crimes by Israeli forces – from settlement expansion to bombings of civilians – and in 2021 the ICC formally opened an investigation into the situation in Palestine. Yet, as Gaza endured a devastating military campaign that killed thousands of civilians, the ICC’s presence was barely felt. No urgent arrest warrants, no influx of funds and forensic teams, no global summit to champion the victims. The court merely repeated that it had jurisdiction and was monitoring events, even as evidence mounted of indiscriminate bombings and calls by some Israeli officials to “erase” Gaza. To people in Africa and across the Global South, this was a familiar story: when the victims are in Africa or the Middle East, and the alleged perpetrators are allies of the West, the wheels of justice grind to a halt. The stark disparity between the vigorous pursuit of Russian crimes in Ukraine and the apparent hesitation to tackle Israeli actions in Palestine did not go unnoticed. It confirmed what many have long suspected – that in the international arena, who the victim is and who the perpetrator is will determine how justice is served. Allies of powerful nations can count on a degree of impunity, while those lacking such protection (often Africans or other peoples of color) face the full force of international prosecutions. Human rights organizations have warned that this kind of selective approach undermines the very foundation of international law. Indeed, it’s hard to argue with the charge that the international justice system has a “true color” – one that too often favors the powerful and leaves others unprotected.
All these issues have led to a moment of reckoning for the ICC in Africa. The court that once symbolized hope for ending cycles of atrocity is now widely viewed on the continent with skepticism, if not outright distrust. This is not a fringe sentiment but a mainstream one, shared by officials and ordinary citizens alike who have watched the ICC’s actions over the years. The cumulative effect of perceived slights, from the imbalance in prosecutions to the heavy-handed treatment of African cases, is that the ICC’s moral authority has been dented. In its place grows a resolve that Africa must reclaim agency over matters of justice. The recent establishment of Africa-led courts and renewed calls to empower regional judicial bodies are concrete manifestations of this resolve. African nations are saying that if international justice cannot be trusted to be fair, they will take on the mantle themselves. They want courts that are close to the affected communities, judges who understand the context, and trials that cannot be mistaken for neocolonial expeditions.
Whether these efforts will succeed is an open question. Building a credible international court is a massive undertaking, and African initiatives will face many challenges – political, financial, and logistical. Yet, the drive to create an African alternative underscores just how disillusioned many have become with the status quo. The ICC, for its part, now faces a crucial test: Can it reform and rebuild trust, or will it be forever seen as a politicized instrument of Western powers? Its new leadership has promised to listen to criticisms and apply the law impartially, but words may not be enough to change entrenched perceptions. The proof will lie in actions – for instance, whether the court can muster the courage to prosecute crimes by the powerful, and whether it addresses the procedural biases that have hurt African defendants.
In the end, the controversy over the ICC is about more than just one institution; it strikes at the core of what global justice means.
For Africans and indeed for many across the developing world justice is only justice if it is universal. If one man’s war criminal is another man’s untouchable ally, the entire system loses credibility. The ICC was born from the ideal that there should be no safe haven for those who commit humanity’s worst crimes. To salvage that ideal, the court must confront the uncomfortable truth that it has not lived up to its promise of equality before the law. Until it does, accusations of neo-colonialism and racism will continue to hound the ICC. And African states, proud and conscious of their sovereignty, will continue to seek solutions that don’t require bowing to a distant court in Europe. As one African commentator put it, “The ICC has become a political weapon of the West. It’s time we had our own tools for our own justice.” In this new chapter, Africa is asserting that it will no longer be merely the judged – it will be the judge of its destiny, determined to ensure that justice wears no racial or colonial blindfold.
