“The monograph argues that it is imperative that Africa’s 31 members of the ICC are encouraged to take seriously their obligations under the Rome Statute to ensure accountability for perpetrators, and that the 53 members of the AU are called to affirm rather than cheapen the organisation’s commitment to eradicate impunity and ensure responsibility for perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. This effort is one that African victims of international crimes deserve. The ICC is an integral means by which Africans might end impunity on their continent.Civil society and others committed to the work of the ICC in Africa thus need urgently to proclaim the varied and
compelling reasons why it can be trusted. A failure to do so means risking the court’s work in Africa coming undone on the basis of misperceptions and inaccuracies. The monograph’s central imperative is captured in its final sentence, namely that ‘there is thus much important work to be done so that the court may be improved in the pursuit of, or in response to, African interests – to ensure the ICC that Africa wants’.”
