Uganda signs petition for formation of a global Anti-Corruption Court

By Pascal Kwesiga & Michael Odeng

The Anti-Corruption Coalition Uganda has signed a petition for the formation of an International Anti-Corruption Court (IACC) to investigate and prosecute corruption crimes without “interference from governments.”

Activists want submission to the IACC’s jurisdiction to become a requirement for all countries that ratified the United Nations Convention against Corruption and a condition on membership for International Organizations such as Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and World Trade Organization.

They also want submission to the court’s jurisdiction to be set as a requirement for obtaining loans from International lenders like World Bank.

The proposal for setting IACC was mooted by a US judge, Mark L. Woolf, who argued in his paper published in the Brookings Institution in America recently that the court is necessary to handle pervasive grand corruption in higher levels of governments.

Grand corruption, he observed, continues to go unpunished in the absence of international effective measures to combat it.

The International Anti-Corruption activists have since set up an online platform for people to sign the petition for the establishment of the court.

Only 500 people are required to sign the online petition by August 23. By press time, close to 300 people including Ugandans had signed the petition.

According to Cissy Kagaba, the executive director, Anti-Corruption Coalition Uganda, the proposal for the IACC’s formation will be presented to the UN after they have mustered the required number of signatures.