International Organizations

On November 2—the day before the U.S. presidential election—more than seventy-one states party to the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a statement in a UN General Assembly plenary session that affirmed their commitment "to preserve the tribunal's independence undeterred by any measures or threats against the Court, its officials, and those cooperating with it." Though the statement did not mention the United States, it was a response to the Trump administration's sanctions against the court's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and other ICC personnel. The statement was supported by NATO member states—except the United States—as well as by most other U.S. allies and friends. It was also supported by Nigeria, South Africa, and other African states. The 1998 Rome Statute established the ICC as a mechanism for holding governments accountable for crimes against humanity and genocide. A total of 123 states are party to it. In effect, it imposes limits on the national sovereignty of those states that accept its jurisdiction. Under President Bill Clinton, the United States signed [PDF] the Rome Statute. However, the George W. Bush administration declined to submit it to the Senate for ratification, and no U.S. administration has accepted ICC jurisdiction over the country or its citizens, though Barack Obama’s administration actively cooperated with it. The ICC is based in the Hague. Four of its eighteen judges are African, as is the chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, from The Gambia. However, all eight of its active investigations and eighteen active prosecutions involve African states and Africans. Authoritarian African rulers tend to loathe the ICC, accusing it of "racism" and "colonialism." Among others, Uganda (under President Yoweri Museveni) and South Africa (under former President Jacob Zuma) have threatened to withdraw from the court's jurisdiction, though none has actually done so. Fatou Bensouda, however, has pointed out that that six of the eight active investigations have been undertaken at the request of African governments.  At present, the chief prosecutor is looking into whether there are grounds for an ICC investigation in Afghanistan that would primarily focus on the Taliban and Afghani forces but also U.S. military units. She is also looking at complaints about Israel. (The Palestinian State accepts ICC jurisdiction, Israel does not.) Consistent with U.S. policy, the Trump administration forcefully rejects any ICC investigatory role regarding U.S. military forces in Afghanistan. Accordingly, it has imposed economic sanctions on Fatou Bensouda and other ICC personnel that presumably involve personal hardship, including revocation of visas and freezing of U.S. bank accounts. Administration use of economic sanctions has long been common—the Obama administration imposed some two thousand. But their focus was primarily criminals or rogue states, not human rights lawyers such as Bensouda. Further, the Trump administration's rhetoric against the ICC has been strong—a senior administration figure has raised the prospect of abolishing it. The Trump administration's rhetoric and imposition of sanctions on individuals are consistent with its "America First" ideology and adherence to maintenance of absolute American sovereignty, including over American forces stationed abroad. However, its style and rhetoric, more than the substance of its position, distance itself from its traditional allies and partners and human rights organizations. But the rhetoric is likely to be welcomed by authoritarian leaders in Africa—as well as elsewhere.

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The two finalists for the position of director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are Yoo Myung-hee, Republic of Korea, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian and (since 2019) an American citizen. The media is portraying Yoo Myung-hee as an international trade specialist and a WTO insider, while Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala describes herself as a WTO outsider; she combines, however, exceptional political and diplomatic experience with her economic training and subsequent career. She has been twice Nigeria's finance minister and once the foreign minister. During the Goodluck Jonathan administration she was also coordinating minister of the economy. The media sees both finalists as qualified, and both were supported by the European Union (EU). The WTO strives to fill the director general position by consensus; that process is now underway and is likely to be completed by the end of October—before the U.S. presidential election. Securing EU support is likely to be crucial.  The Trump administration has been highly critical of the WTO, seeing it as overly favorable toward China, and has called for its reform. It has not signaled which of the two leading candidates it favors, though Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala's reformist and outsider rhetoric would seem attractive to it. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was born in 1954 in southern Nigeria; her father was an Igbo traditional ruler and an academic. She graduated from Harvard and earned a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her husband, also of Nigerian origin, is a medical doctor practicing in Washington, DC. For many years she was an economist at the World Bank, rising to become managing director (the number two position in the bank’s hierarchy). In 2011, she ran unsuccessfully for the top World Bank position. After the restoration of civilian government in Nigeria in 1999, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala returned to Nigeria where she served as financial minister under President Olusegun Obasanjo and, briefly, foreign minister. Under the extraordinarily difficult circumstances of Nigerian governance, she largely eliminated the country's Paris Club debt and instituted practical measures to increase financial transparency. She has published a book that charts her struggle against the country's endemic corruption. Despite her ministerial positions, she was not immune to the travails of life in Nigeria: her octogenarian mother was kidnapped and held in bad conditions. She was released, presumably after ransom was paid. (Paying ransom is illegal in Nigeria, so details rarely appear in the media.) Whichever candidate is chosen, the WTO will be led for the first time by a woman. If Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala gets the nod, she will also be the first Nigerian—and first African—to lead the WTO. By background she would appear to have the strongest reform credentials.

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Links between COVID-19 and other global challenges underscore the importance of multilateral cooperation across a broad array of issue areas.

With the United Kingdom moving forward with Brexit, London hopes its Commonwealth partners can help boost trade, but critics say the group is outmoded and ineffective.

The number of cases of Ebola in the eastern Congo continues to fall, and there had been speculation that the World Health Organization’s Emergency Committee would remove the designation of Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) from the outbreak. However, at its February 12 meeting, the Committee voted unanimously to keep the designation. The original designation was made on July 17, 2019.  In its report, the committee put the Ebola risk as high at the national and regional levels, but low at the global level. The committee noted that sustained progress is dependent on improvement in the security situation, and security incidents had actually increased in recent months. The poor security situation and deep distrust of outsiders by locals has made this Ebola outbreak particularly difficult to tackle. The meeting also noted that outbreaks of other infectious diseases, notably measles and cholera, continue in the Democratic Republic of Congo and merit international attention and support. From the beginning of the current outbreak to February 10, the WHO states 3,308 confirmed and probable Ebola cases in eastern Congo, and that 2,253 people had died, about two-thirds. The WHO estimates the death rate from the coronavirus is about 2 percent, but cautions that it is too early to be definitive. Nevertheless, it is clear that Ebola is vastly more deadly, if still largely confined to eastern Congo. 

On Monday, December 16, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, special representative and head of the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS) delivered a grim message to the UN Security Council. He characterized West Africa as “shaken by unprecedented violence,” involving terrorism, organized crime, and intercommunal violence. He made specific reference to al-Qaeda’s explotiation of local circumstances to spread extremism, including conflicts over land and water use. He also noted the consequences of climate change on agriculture and the livestock industry in the region. Chambas told the Security Council that the region continues to need donor and technical assistance, but he also emphasized the region’s need for law-enforcement and security assistance. He cited the need for international coordination to respond to illicit trade, especially in arms. A lawyer and diplomat from Ghana, Chambas has been in his current position since 2014. He has had a long and distinguished career in West Africa, including holding the presidency of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission, as secretary general of the African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States, and as head of the Joint United Nations–African Union Mission to Darfur. He is a highly distinguished international civil servant who speaks with special credibility on West African affairs. Hence the importance of his latest statement to the UN Security Council. For the United States and some other donor countries, security and law-enforcement assistance can be difficult because of the region’s weak governance and corruption. But Chambas was clear that addressing governance, partly through achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, is crucial to ending the violence facing West Africa. This is primarily the responsibility of the African states in question, though friends of the regional can help on the margins.