Gambia’s President Adama Barrow has renewed his administration’s full and unwavering support for the International Criminal Court (ICC).
In a meeting with the Gambian-born chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in Brussels, President Barrow reaffirmed Gambia’s support insisting that the country still remains a member of the Rome Statue that created the ICC.
President Barrow received Prosecutor Bensouda on Friday as he wind up his maiden European tour which took him to France then to Brusssels.
Sources say President Barrow and Prosecutor Bensouda discussed Gambia’s recent position on ICC, former President Jammeh’s poor human rights records, the Gambia’s judicial system among others.
In October 2016, then government of former President Yahya Jammeh announced the country’s withdrawal from International Criminal Court, accusing the world body of ignoring the “war crimes” of Western nations and seeking only to prosecute Africans.
“This action is warranted by the fact that the ICC, despite being called the International Criminal Court, is in fact an International Caucasian Court for the persecution and humiliation of people of colour, especially Africans,” Information Minister at the time, Sheriff Bojang said on state television.
The ICC’s current chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, is Gambian and was as an adviser to Jammeh in the early years of his rule after he seized power in a coup in 1994. She later served as justice minister.
This was not the first time then President Jammeh pulled the country out of an international institution. In 2013, he withdrew Gambia from the Commonwealth, the 54-member grouping including Britain and most of its former colonies, branding it a “neo-colonial institution”.
Mr Jammeh notified the United Nations in November that he was pulling his country out of the ICC which was due to take effect in November 2017.
Meanwhile, in February 2017, after winning a historic Presidential election ending Jammeh’s 22 years rule, President Adama Barrow announced the rescinding of the decision to withdraw from the ICC.
Barrow said his regime is committed to the principles enshrined in the Rome Statue of the ICC and instructed his Foreign Minister to write and rescind the decision.
In a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, Gambia’s minister of Foreign Affairs International Cooperation and Gambians Abroad, Ousainou Darboe, said the Gambia still considers herself as a state party to the statue of the ICC and will continue to honour her obligations.
Mr Darboe said as a new government that has committed itself to the promotion of human rights, democracy, good governance and respect for the rule of law, the Barrow administration in line with its vision for a new democratic Gambia, is deeply committed to the principles enshrined in the Rome Statue of the ICC.
