From 7-8 July 2017, Senegal’s capital of Dakar was the scene of a public symposium entitled, “Changing the Narrative – From Withdrawal to Constructive Engagement”.
Click here for the Symposium report.
Convened by the Wayamo Foundation and the Africa Group for Justice and Accountability (AGJA), the symposium brought together a number of leading stakeholders, experts, scholars, and practitioners in order to discuss a range of topics, including the current status of the relationship between African states and the International Criminal Court (ICC), possible reforms to improve the Court and interpreting the African Union’s (AU) ICC Withdrawal Strategy as a package of reforms, the role of hybrid mechanisms in prosecuting international crimes, combating impunity at a regional level, the coming into force of the crime of aggression, and the thorny issue of sequencing peace and justice.
As a continuation of their ongoing commitment to justice and accountability across the continent, the Wayamo Foundation and AGJA convened a capacity building workshop from 10-11 July, following their two-day public symposium. The two-day training workshop (see programme) brought together for the first time the members of the Special Criminal Court (SCC) of the Central African Republic (CAR). Participants included the judges, prosecutor and deputy prosecutor. Over the course of the two days, members of staff were given the opportunity to learn from the experiences and lessons of colleagues from other international organisations and courts, including the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC) which had successfully prosecuted Hissène Habré in 2016.