Abstract
In a foreword to a special issue of this Journal on the proposed Crimes Against Humanity Convention (CAHC), important questions were raised, including whether such a convention is truly needed, whether such a convention is politically feasible and whether any provisions in the draft articles should be modified. In this piece, the author considers the questions raised, and poses answers from an African and realist perspective, having litigated some of the international criminal justice cases before South African courts. The author contends that the drafters of the Convention would do well to take meaningful account of the domestication of international criminal justice, and the lessons to be learned from national systems that have found themselves at the forefront of the very debates that have animated the drafters of the CAHC, and the Rome Statute before it. If those lessons are to be taken seriously — including the lessons generated by African states and their courts — then the draft Convention might well be improved and some of its most animating provisions sharpened.
Laying the Foundations for a Convention on Crimes Against Humanity