Needed to do more, especially with the adaptation of the Rome Status to ensure that the country’s courts tried perpetrators of genocide, crime against humanity and war crimes.
But that, Piotr Hofmanski indicated, was the sovereign decision for the Ghanaian Parliament to make at its own time.
Ghana has been urged by some Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), to adopt the Bill for the Rome Status of the International Criminal Court to ensure national courts, try perpetrators of genocide, crime against humanity and war crimes.
Ghana accepted a recommendation of the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2012 to domesticate the ICC status in November 2017.
If the bill is passed, it would enable the country’s courts to prosecute perpetrators of the ICC Status crimes as well as transfer cases to the ICC that domestic courts are unable to prosecute.
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Ghana has been commended for its original commitment to the ICC, as the second African country to ratify the International Court, but has not given the status effect under domestic law.
Piotr Hofmanski underscored the role Ghana played in the ratification of the status of the ICC which had not only provided additional funding support for the Court, but also political support.
On his part, Ghana’s President Akufo-Addo said the work of the ICC was one of the few areas where there was broad political support in the country.
The President said the country’s Parliament that ratified the Treaty in 1999 was the Parliament dominated at the time by the present opposition and soon after his party, the New Patriotic Party took office in 2001, he as the then Attorney-General participated in the ceremony that brought the treaty to effect.
He directed that the Attorney-General took steps to domesticate the Roman status so that the country’s courts could try crimes under genocide, crime against humanity, and war crimes, as well as transfer cases to the ICC when the need arises.
Akufo-Addo said though the current Parliament was a hanged one “we can support it to become a reality.”
