Melissa Paredes and Dr. Darren Hawkins, Kennedy Center
Preliminary evidence pointed to Ghana as a likely leader in the creation of the International Criminal Court. Ghana was the sixth country to sign the Rome Statute for creation of the International Criminal Court. It was also one of the first countries to ratify the Statute, after the Ghanaian Parliament voted unanimously for the ratification. Currently, there is a Ghanaian woman serving as the Vice-President of the Court.
In this research, I analyzed three plausible theories to explain Ghana’s support for the Court. First, I looked at the “lock in” theory that suggests a young democracy like Ghana would support the creation of the Court to consolidate democratic institutions, particularly if there are still concerns of a military coup or reforms from a non-democratic political player (Moravcsik 2000).
A second explanation is that domestic human rights organizations, through persuasive discourse, helped shaped Ghana’s support for a human rights enforcement mechanism like the ICC (Sikkink 1993, Finnemore 1996). A third explanation says that Ghana was acting in their self-interest in order to get aid from European countries. The evidence indicates a fourth explanation, which is that Ghana mainly agreed to support the treaty for mainly for reputation.
I conducted on-site interviews of Ghanaian elites regarding the creation of the Court while in Accra. I also examined a variety of documents, like UN speeches, NGO documents, and Parliamentary speeches. Further, I researched the extent to which Ghana relies on foreign aid and whether those amounts have changed and whether they are tied to Ghana’s ICC position. Taken together, these methods amount to historical process tracing in which cause and effect is shown to exist by linking initial conditions to ultimate outcomes through a chain of historical events that are all consistent with the specified hypotheses.
Research on Ghana’s military and the current state of democracy it seems unlikely that the “lock in” theory explains Ghana’s support for the Court. Although Ghana’s transition to democracy was relatively recent, Freedom House ratings show that democracy in the country is consolidated. Ghana is ranked “free” for the last six consecutive years, with a “1” ranking in political rights in 2006. Further, research on the military shows that Ghana’s military, especially the top ranking officers, believes in its subordination to civilian rule (Handley and Mills 2001).
Furthermore, interviews conducted in Accra with major domestic human rights organizations showed that they were not involved in lobbying the government to persuade it to support the creation of the ICC. Currently, AFLA is an NGO highly active in organizing events about the ICC. Since 2003, they have organized conferences about the ICC, conducted interviews to ICC officials, and covered the ICC in their quarterly journal. However, an interview with Evelyn A. Ankumah, the executive director of AFLA headquarter in Accra, clearly shows that this organization was not involved in campaigning for the ICC until after its creation. In fact, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice who keeps a list of all human rights related NGOs in the country could not provide any name of an organization involved in lobbying for the ICC, except for AFLA.The third explanation explores aid given to Ghana. Looking at the OECD information, it becomes clear the major aid donors for Ghana are not European countries that were strong proponent of the ICC during the negotiation period. At the time of the Rome Conference, two of Ghana’s top three country donors were the United States and Japan, which were not major supporters of the ICC.
In sum, the evidence indicates a possible fourth explanation. None of the other theories adequately explain Ghana’s support and ratification of the ICC. Considering Ghana’s recently consolidated democracy (see Freedom House ranking), it seems likely that the government cares about their international image. This would also explain the years of ratification of major human rights treaties (see Human Rights treaties box); for the most part, they were all ratified in the same time period. In addition, interviews in Accra highlighted the fact that many Ghanaians take special pride in the roles their “illustrious son” Koffin Annan and “illustrious daughter” Akua Kuenyehia play in the international community through the United Nations.
WORKS CITED
- Finnemore, M. and K. Sikkink. 1998. Norms and International relations theory. International Organization 50 (Spring): 325-348.
- Goodliffe, Hawkins, Sanders. 2006. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Rome: Explaining International Criminal Court Negotiations. Presented at the 47th annual International Studies Association Convention, San Diego, Calif., March 22-25.
- Moravcsik, Andrew. 2000. The Origins of Human Rights Regimes: Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe
- Sikkin, K. 1993. The power of principled ideas: Human rights policies in the US and Western Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.