Many Africans supported the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) because we believed it would help us end high-level impunity for mass atrocities and ‘enable us to attain the best we are capable of,’ Chidi Anselm Odinkalu tells Pambazuka News. But just five years after the ICC received its first case from Uganda, victims of ‘bad government’ across the continent are no longer sure the court can help them secure justice.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/445/58272_Kakuma_camp.tmb.jpgAs part of a global campaign to end the ‘warehousing’ of refugees, Merrill Smith, director of government relations and international advocacy for the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, speaks to KANERE (Kakuma News Reflector) about the UNHCR’s position on the practice, the campaign’s most significant successes so far, and the role of a free refugee press in ending warehousing.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a US policy to encourage the formation of economic ties with countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, sounds generous on paper, writes Steve Ouma Akoth. But a closer look at the situation on the ground in Kenya raises questions about who will really benefit from AGOA, Akoth tells Pambazuka News.

Amid growing unease among many African states about the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) ‘discretionary’ and ‘selective’ application of international criminal law, Ohio University’s