Abstract
Although democracy and democratic practices, in the form of both direct and indirect public participation in governance are axiomatically a cherished value of liberal democratic principles, populism is nevertheless treated with wariness because of its potential to come into conflict with other cherished values of liberal democratic principles such as human rights and the rule of law. The ‘people’ as such have a limited direct role ascribed in public international law. Therefore, populism for this chapter, references a crisis of political representation where a schism between a people and its representatives is detected, or claimed, or exploited. That so-called democratic deficit makes international criminal law practitioners on the one hand particularly vulnerable to demagogic speech challenging their legitimacy and on the other particularly tempted to counter demagoguery by asserting themselves as being more legitimate representatives of a victimised people than their oppressive rulers. This chapter consequently argues that in international criminal law the people is metaphorically explicable as an optical illusion appearing and disappearing at crucial moments in different guises. In the Kenyan case study selected, these contested guises include victims and popular mandates. The people as such are never present and yet remain politically as well as legally indispensable as a rhetorical claim to ground concrete action oriented towards justice.
‘We the peoples of the United Nations’.
Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations
‘My first draft was quite good, I thought. I’d based it on the UN Charter itself. The Foreign Office sent me over a copy, with a note attached explaining that the preamble to the Charter was known as the Unconditional Surrender of the English Language’.
The Complete Yes Prime Minister at 459
‘if what humans speak is a language, and if there is not only one language but many, then the plurality of languages corresponds to the plurality of people and political communities’.
Giorgio Agamben What is Philosophy? at 6
Edwin Bikundo is a Senior Lecturer at the Griffith Law School, Griffith University at the Gold Coast in Australia.
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Notes
- 1.
International Criminal Court, Judge Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi President of the International Criminal Court: Keynote remarks at plenary session of the 16th Session of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute on the topic of the 20th anniversary of the Rome Statute, 13 December 2017, at 4.
- 2.
Assembly of States Parties of the ICC, Speech by Professor John Dugard SC, Rome Statute 20 years – Addressing current and future challenges, 7 December 2018, at 1.
- 3.
ICC, Transcript case The Prosecutor v. William Samoei Ruto and Joshua Arap Sang, ICC-01/09-01/11, 15 January 2016, at 63.
- 4.
Kagwanja 2009, at 366.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Mudde and Kaltwasser 2013.
- 7.
The Prosecutor vs Francis Kirimi Muthaura, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, and Mohammed Hussein Ali, ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II, Confirmation of Charges Hearing, ICC-01/09-02/11, Court Transcript at 67.
- 8.
UN Human Rights Council, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Mr Philip Alston: Addendum – Mission to Kenya, A/HRC/11/2/Add.6, 26 May 2009, at 7.
- 9.
Ibid., at 8 n 12.
- 10.
Rasmussen 2010.
- 11.
Harneit-Sievers and Peters 2008, at 136.
- 12.
Wamue 2001, at 454.
- 13.
Wamue 2001, at 454.
- 14.
Rasmussen 2010.
- 15.
Agamben 1998, at 24.
- 16.
Ahlberg and Njoroge 2013.
- 17.
Rasmussen 2010.
- 18.
Graf 2017.
- 19.
Ruteere 2008, at 23–24.
- 20.
Rasmussen 2010.
- 21.
See Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1933), 165 LNTS 19 (‘Montevideo Convention’), Article 1.
- 22.
Wolfram (2012), at 103.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Prosecutor v. Akayesu, ICTR, Judgement, ICTR-96-4-T, 2 September 1998, para 516.
- 25.
See Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (1998), 2187 UNTS 90 (‘Rome Statute’), Article 25.
- 26.
Agamben 2000, at 29.
- 27.
Agamben 1998, at 177.
- 28.
- 29.
Ahlberg and Njoroge 2013.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Ahlberg and Njoroge 2013.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Wamue 2001.
- 34.
Agamben 2011, at 1.
- 35.
Agamben 2011, at 2.
- 36.
Agamben 2005, at 19, 21, 45, 165 and 176.
- 37.
Wamue 2001.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Njambi 2004.
- 40.
Ahlberg and Njoroge 2013.
- 41.
Stringer 2014 at 117.
- 42.
Rasmussen 2010.
- 43.
- 44.
Agamben 2015.
- 45.
Ibid., Foreword.
- 46.
Ibid., at 1.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
Ibid., at 3.
- 49.
Ibid., at 12.
- 50.
Agamben 2015, at 12 (emphasis removed).
- 51.
Ibid., at 12.
- 52.
Ibid., at 13.
- 53.
Ibid., at 15.
- 54.
Ibid., at 16.
- 55.
Wamue 2001, at 453–467.
- 56.
Agamben 2015, at 18.
- 57.
Hobbes 2005, at xi, lii, 127, 138, 311 and 484.
- 58.
Agamben 2018, at 27.
- 59.
Agamben 2015, at 29.
- 60.
Ibid., at 33.
- 61.
Ibid., at 35. See also Agamben 2000, at 30–31.
- 62.
Agamben 2015 at 4.
- 63.
Agamben 2005, at 30, 33, 36, 54 and 56.
- 64.
Agamben 2015.
- 65.
Ibid., at 47.
- 66.
Ibid., at 54.
- 67.
Agamben 2018, at 43–44.
- 68.
Ibid., at 20.
- 69.
Katumanga and Cliffe 2005, at 17.
- 70.
Weber 2004, at 33.
- 71.
Weber 2004, at 33 (emphasis in original).
- 72.
Ibid.
- 73.
Weber 2004, at 33.
- 74.
Derrida 1990, at 987.
- 75.
Ibid.
- 76.
Weber 2004, at 33.
- 77.
Weber 2004, at 90
- 78.
Ibid., at 27 n 27 and at 91 n 87.
- 79.
Agamben 2005 52–64.
- 80.
Benjamin 1978, at 277.
- 81.
Ibid., at 280–281.
- 82.
Schmitt 2005 at 36.
- 83.
Ibid.
- 84.
The Prosecutor vs Francis Kirimi Muthaura, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, and Mohammed Hussein Ali, ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II, Public Redacted Version Decision on the Confirmation of Charges Pursuant to Article 61(7)(a) and (b) of the Rome Statute, at paras 289–295.
- 85.
Ibid.
- 86.
Rasmussen 2010.
- 87.
Ibid.
- 88.
Rasmussen 2010.
- 89.
Ibid.
- 90.
Kagwanja 2005, at 41–42.
- 91.
Ibid.
- 92.
Goethe 2001, at 36.
- 93.
Benjamin 1978, at 277.
- 94.
Agamben 2018, at 22.
- 95.
Ibid., at 35.
- 96.
Ibid.
- 97.
Ibid., at 47.
- 98.
Ibid.
- 99.
Ibid., at 7.
- 100.
Ibid., at 20.
- 101.
Ibid., at 22.
- 102.
Ibid.
- 103.
Weber 2004, at 81–82.
- 104.
Agamben 2018, at 23.
- 105.
Weber 2004, at 81.
- 106.
Ibid., at 83.
- 107.
Ibid.
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Bikundo, E. (2019). People, Politics and Populism in International Criminal Law: The Mungiki as Kenyan Ethnos and Kenyan Demos. In: Nijman, J., Werner, W. (eds) Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2018. Netherlands Yearbook of International Law, vol 49. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-331-3_6
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