Implementation in Senegal

Senegal was the first country in the world to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on February 2, 1999. In early 2000, Human Rights First was approached by the Organisation Nationale des Droits de l’Homme (ONDH) and asked to assist in a project aimed at achieving the implementation of the Rome Statute in domestic law.

The inception of this project is described in the report of the October 2001 Dakar conference. Human Rights First and ONDH worked jointly over several months to produce a legal analysis of the compatibility of Senegalese law with the Rome Statute. This legal analysis was discussed during a conference organized by ONDH, Human Rights First and FIDH in Dakar in October 2001, under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice of Senegal, and thanks to the support of the Canadian government and of the Agence intergouvernementale de la Francophonie. A set of recommendations was adopted and a full implementation kit was officially submitted to the government at the end of the Conference. The government then announced that it would start drafting implementing legislation.

The Senegalese government issued a first draft of its legislation in December 2002 and submitted it to civil society actors for comments. Human Rights First, together with Human Rights Watch, submitted detailed comments on the draft and proposed a revised version. The government organized a seminar in March 2003 to discuss and finalize the draft legislation. At that seminar, which was attended by the same group of experts (lawyers, judges, law professors and NGO representatives), the draft legislation was reviewed article by article on the basis of the Human Rights First – Human Rights Watch comments and of comments produced by the ICRC. The final drafts were sent to a Commission tasked with revising the criminal code and the code of criminal procedure, and would then be sent to Parliament.

The content of the draft legislation is reviewed in the Human Rights First report on the March 2003 seminar. Despite certain important concerns, such as the applicability of the death penalty, Human Rights First believes that the two pieces of draft legislation, which amend the criminal code and code of criminal procedure respectively, are overall in conformity with the Rome Statute and provide a solid basis both for Senegal to cooperate with the Court and to prosecute the crimes contained in the Rome Statute in its own courts.