[Oumar Ba is an Associate Professor of International Relations at Morehouse College.] To write is a privilege. To be read, an honor. It takes unbounded generosity to critically engage with a book and offer an incisive critique in the midst of a global pandemic that has upended our lives. For that, I owe a profound debt of gratitude to my brilliant colleagues who have made this...
[Dr Sithembile Mbete is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Pretoria.] In his book States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court, Oumar Ba masterfully engages the politics of international justice by examining how weaker states have used the International Criminal Court (ICC) to advance their security and political interests in a manner that belies the ‘justice cascade’ argument made...
[Kelly-Jo Bluen is a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics and the editor of Millennium: Journal of International Studies responsible for the conference and special issue on knowledge production in International Relations. She works on race, gender, coloniality, and international justice.] In States of Justice, Oumar Ba provides a crucial latticework for thinking through the relationship between states and...
[Ezéchiel Amani Cirimwami is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law. He is also completing a joint PhD in international law at the Université Catholique de Louvain and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is a sitting judge and a former Deputy Public Prosecutor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.] I was thrilled when invited to provide some...
[Nestor Nkurunziza is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Burundi (on leave for doctoral research at the University of Ottawa)]. Much has been written on the crisis with the ICC in recent literature. However, Oumar Ba’s ‘States of Justice’ brings a great contribution to the existing scholarship, both in terms of the conceptual framework used and the relevance of the case studies...
[K.K. Sithebe is a PhD Candidate at the University of Pretoria and a Research Advisor, South African Human Rights Commission.] Professor Oumar Ba’s States of Justice provides much needed scholarship on the subject of international criminal justice and self-referrals. Prof. Ba provides a meticulous account of how individual African states, particularly Uganda, have since exploited the self-referral mechanism as envisaged in the Rome Statute. Further, this fine scholar...
[Emma Charlene Lubaale is an Associate Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa.] This is an unusual piece of work. As opposed to merely engaging with theoretical rules and existing literature on the subject of complementarity; means of triggering the ICC’s jurisdiction; interaction between states and international law, etc., the author has apparently set himself the excellent task of...
[Julia Emtseva is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.] Belarus, a country known as “Europe’s last dictatorship”, held a presidential election on 9 August amid decreasing support of Lukashenko’s leadership. According to election officials, he won 80.23% of the vote, while his main opponent, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, received 9.9%. Belarusians, however, said that election results were rigged. Ms. Tikhanovskaya rejected the...
[Nabil M. Orina is a Lecturer at Moi University, School of Law (Kenya) and a Doctoral Candidate at City University of Hong Kong.] Various studies have theorised the relationship between the ICC (the Court) and states. In these studies, scholars have sought to understand what normative effect the Court has on situation countries through the principle of complementarity (see, for instance, Nouwen). It is apparent...
[Melissa L. Simms is currently a Legal Officer with the United Nations and formerly with the International Criminal Court. The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the United Nations or the ICC.] Oumar Ba, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Morehouse College in Atlanta, United States has certainly stoked interest...
Call for Papers German Yearbook of International Law: The Editorial Staff of the German Yearbook of International Law (GYIL) is pleased to welcome submissions for volume 63 (2020) of the journal, inviting interested parties to submit contributions for consideration for inclusion in the forthcoming edition. 2020 has proven to be the most consequential year in modern history. Recent global events have...
[Owiso Owiso is a Doctoral Researcher in Public International Law at the University of Luxembourg.] Inter-governmental organisations are often theatres of inter-state politics. Why then does the suggestion that the International Criminal Court (ICC) may not be any different bother observers so? Well, that is perhaps because the ICC is not just another ‘ordinary’ inter-governmental organisation. It is also, and perhaps primarily, a judicial mechanism. As...