Beyond 'African Solutions to African Problems' at the Extraordinary African Chambers and 'Distant Justice' at the International Criminal Court
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Beyond African Solutions to
African Problems'at the
Extraordinary African
Chambers and 'Distant
Justice'at the International
Criminal Court
Thijs B. Bouwknegt*
Abstract
The trial of Chads former President Hissene Habre in 2015 was heartily anticipated
and then heralded as an African solution to African problems. In myriad ways, the
Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC) in Senegal's court system indeed picketed a
momentous transitional justice experience. It was simultaneously international, re-
gional and local. It applied the universal jurisdiction principle. It judged a former
and foreign head of state. It dealt with a 'cold case' from the Cold War. This was
unprecedented in Africa and elsewhere. Crucially, the Habre trial departed from a
'distant, alienating trend of symbolic justice for African atrocities promised by the
International Criminal Court (ICC). In Dakar, justice was pursued, performed and
profited by those indirectly and directly victimized by the accused, while the passion-
ate courtroom dynamics were palatably and transparently broadcasted.
Notwithstanding these topical novelties, this article traces a more complex, more
remote, and at times forgotten genealogy of transitional justice in Africa. By histor-
icizing, contextualizing and exemplifying the Habre trial in light of unseen prece-
dents from, inter alia, Congo Free State, Namibia, Equatorial Guinea and Ethiopia,
it seeks to add historical layers of complexity to portrayals of Africa as passive
object in the evolution of international criminal justice.
* Researcher, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam, the
Netherlands; Assistant Professor, Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden. I would like to thank
Barbora Hold for her valuable comments during the drafting process. I am also grateful to
Urmila De and Antonio Coco and the anonymous reviewers for their highly constructive re-
marks and engagement. [t.bouwknegt@niod.knaw.nl]
Journal of International Criminal Justice 17 (2019), 981-1004 doi:10.1093/jicj/mqz039
( The Author(s) (2019). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Advance Access publication 5 November 2019
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