TEXT OF PETITION TO CHIEF PROSECUTOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT TO INVESTIGATE, PROSECUTE AND SEEK THE PUNISHMENT OF CORRUPTION AS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.
The Chief Prosecutor
International Criminal
Court (ICC)
LARGE-SCALE CORRUPTION IS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY AND
OUGHT TO BE INVESTIGATED AND PROSECUTED AS SUCH BY THE OFFICE OF THE CHIEF
PROSECUTOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT.
The efforts of your Office, in
investigating and prosecuting of ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’,
are laudable, as it serves to check excesses and punish misdeeds by authorities
of States whose conduct tend to diminish humanity, increase human suffering and
thwart efforts at human and societal advancement.
It is however a source of worry and
concern that in the discharge of your duties as explicitly expressed in Article
15 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (The Statute), your
Office has inadvertently or otherwise, omitted investigations into and or
prosecutions for a crime that in most cases, founds and gives rise to a
plethora of violent crimes which your Office has focused its enormous powers on
– ‘large-scale corruption and corrupt practices’.
Definition and characteristics of ‘crime
against humanity’:
Article 5 (b) of The Statute stipulates
‘crimes against humanity’ as one of the four categories of crimes your Office
and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has jurisdiction over.
Article 7 of The Statute goes ahead to list
a series of items which “when committed as part of a widespread or systematic
attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack”,
constitute ‘crimes against humanity’, these acts include:
(a) “Murder;
(b) Extermination;
(c) Enslavement;
(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of
population;
(e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation
of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
(f) Torture;
(g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced
prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of
sexual violence of comparable gravity;
(h) Persecution against any identifiable
group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural,
religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are
universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection
with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction
of the Court;
(i) Enforced disappearance of persons;
(j) The crime of apartheid”;
Of critical importance however is Article 7
(k) of The Statute, which whilst recognizing the acts listed in Article 7 (a) –
(j) above as being non-conclusive, further lists as a ‘crime against humanity’,
“Other inhumane acts of a similar character
intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental
or physical health”.
