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A grave injustice

Dr Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and alleged pioneer of ‘transparency,’ began his talk at the Oxford Forum for International Development on Thursday evening by outlining a judicial ‘code.’

Being a raving cynic, this word was all I needed to become suspicious. Dr. Moreno-Ocampo released the standard array of African statistics for us to drool over: the plight of some two million Sudanese, the extent of rape, and so on.

Bored? That’s because it’s a tale we’ve all heard too many times. I reckon Moreno-Ocampo is merely hoping to get in with the lads (such as they are at The Hague), with his ‘statistical virility.’

We then listened to a succession of all-too-revealing anecdotes about the high-profile men that he had tried and judged; how he had enacted ‘justice’ by threatening Sudanese rebels who failed to be enslaved to Western wishes by Security Council sanctions.

Judging by Dr Moreno-Ocampo, it seems that international justice is fashionable in the West only so far as it suits the ambitions of Western governments. Such a single-minded view was not what I expected as an opening to a forum for development.

In one comment, he justified the role of the International Criminal Court by telling of one successful suit brought by an African plaintiff against the man who had raped his daughter.

The young girl at the trial had allegedly been brought tears of joy in celebration of this retribution. This might have been a touching story, had Moreno-Ocampo not been so thoughtless as to conclude it with an explanation of how ‘desperate’ she had been.

So the need for an International Criminal Court is founded on there being a great enough supply of people so hungry for change that they are willing to accept a selection of the West’s finest legal ‘E’ numbers, a practice enforcing a dangerous dependence on western nations, and allowing them control over African diplomacy.

Moreno-Ocampo’s dominance was eventually broken by a daring questioner, who wished to better comprehend where the justice lay in trying a high-profile African criminal in The Hague, far from the people to whom the trial might matter.

Evidently, in a world where African development has become sexy (the multitude of conferences, speakers and events in Oxford alone attest to it) it’s all too easy to be blinded by the excessive pornography of poverty on offer, therefore failing to gain any real understanding.

The quantity of development efforts may have mushroomed, but I greatly hope the OxFid as a whole will deliver on the promise of assessing the quality of our attempts.

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