Book Review: Africa and the Backlash Against International Courts by Peter Brett and Line Engbo Gissel
| Date | 01 April 2022 |
| Author | Tonny Raymond Kirabira |
| Published date | 01 April 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/09646639211032597 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
PETER BRETT AND LINE ENGBO GISSEL, Africa and the Backlash Against International Courts.
London: Zed Books, 2020, pp. 288, ISBN 9781786992987, £70.00 (hbk).
Recent history has witnessed a transformation in the international legal order, leading
to a proliferation of courts based on contemporary norms of human rights and
democracy.
Peter Brett and Line Engbo Gissels’book, Africa and the Backlash Against
International Courts, opens sightlines for scholars looking to examine African engage-
ment with both regional and global justice systems. The book tests the robustness of inter-
national judicial regimes by examining their performance in Africa, highlighting the
continent’s dynamic international activity. The key contribution of this book lies in
how the authors offer legitimation as an explanation for the African backlash against
international courts.
The preface of the book provides an impressive data set, from the authors’extensive
fieldwork across East, Southern and West Africa. The five chapters cover a list of themes
specific to different regions of Africa. In the introduction to the book, the authors high-
light contrasts between African states’attitudes towards the International Criminal Court
(ICC) and regional courts. They suggest a need for another explanation for the fractious
relationships, beyond the principle of sovereign equality. It sets a stage for the book to
explain the backlash against the ICC, and support for emerging international courts in
the face of sovereignty discourses.
The first chapter traces the so-called African backlash against international courts to
the post-Cold War period. The authors attribute the proliferation of international courts
primarily to what they call ‘strategies of extraversion’, where states seek for international
resources and alignment with donor policies (p. 22). They dismiss the role of non-
governmental organizations in the establishment of new international courts in Africa.
Overall, the authors attempt to shift the focus from sovereignty to new imperatives of
global power imbalances and economy.
Chapter 2 analyses African states’turbulent relationship with the ICC. By way of
background, the chapter discusses four strands of critique against the ICC intervention
in Africa: the court’s interference with peacebuilding, the targeting of Africa by
more powerful global actors, the role of the United Nations Security Council within
the Rome Statute regime and threats to sovereign immunity (p. 36). According to the
authors, both the African Union (AU) and many African states have been trying to
delegitimize the ICC’s authority in three ways: ‘exposing politicisation by the Court, non-
cooperation and withdrawal threats’(p. 46). The authors show the uncertainty about the
legal and political consequences of the AU’s proposed ICC withdrawal strategy and the
Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice
and Human Rights (Malabo Protocol; p. 52).
In the second half of the book, the authors delve deeper in the African backlash against
international courts, specifically the regional courts on the continent. Chapter 3 focuses
on the Southern African Development Community. Notably, the chapter shows that
the notion of respect for state sovereignty is not a standard account for the backlash
against regional courts. Instead, the authors emphasize regional norms of legitimate sta-
tehood in explaining the backlash in Southern Africa. In a nutshell, the authors point to
340 Social & Legal Studies 31(2)
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