Rights group urges AU to bolster the ICC

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- African Union members should push to bolster the authority of the International Criminal Court, human rights advocates said Monday in South Africa.

The Johannesburg, South Africa, office of Human Rights Watch said in a statement that the AU Commission should use its Nov. 3-6 session in Ethiopia -- called to discuss the ICC -- to promote The Hague court's ability to prosecute the world's worst crimes fairly and effectively.

The AU's stated purpose of the Addis Ababa meeting is to prepare for the Review Conference on the ICC, scheduled for May 2010 in Uganda.

"Governments that oppose the ICC can be expected to try to use the AU meeting to undercut the court's ability to ensure justice for African and other victims," Aloysius Toe of Foundation for Human Rights and Democracy in Liberia told HRW, noting that in July the AU decided to not cooperate with the ICC in the arrest of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.

"The ICC is not without shortcomings, but the court remains one of the most important checks against unbridled impunity on the African continent," added Georges Kapiamba of the Association Africaine de Defense des Droits de l'Homme in the Democratic Republic of Congo.