THE AFRICAN REGIONAL SYSTEM OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH UNIVERSAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE: CONFLICT OR POSITIVE COMPLEMENTARITY?

Africa provides the first global experience of regionalization of international criminal law. This innovation poses theoretical problems in relation to the juridical foundations of this regionalization and its relation with the universal criminal justice. This process is also accompanied by political controversies that criticize the political opportunity and the effectiveness of this initiative, indicating it as an expression of the rejection of the jurisdictional competences of the International Criminal Court on the African continent. Based on these premises, this paper studies the scope and contribution of African international criminal regional law in the development of the general international criminal law, examining from several angles the contextual progression as well as the legal, political and institutional implications of this process of regionalization of international criminal law, completed by the African Union. It aims to understand more specifically this process by analysing first, the political and sociological motivations that are in the origin of this process, secondly the legal basis and several articulations of the African regional international criminal law system. Finally, the paper considers several dimensions of the relations between the African Union (AU) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).