The Accountability Gap Reconsidered: International Criminal Justice, Selective Prosecution, and African Sovereignty

Asymmetric accountability is developed as a framework for understanding the accountability gap in international criminal justice, with emphasis on selective prosecution and African sovereignty. The argument advanced is that the unequal geography of enforcement is produced by asymmetries in referral power, arrest capacity, complementarity practice, and the insulation of major powers and their allies from comparable scrutiny. Drawing on systematic analysis of all ICC indictments from 2002 to 2024; case studies of Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan, and Libya; discourse analysis of AU Assembly communiqués; and comparison with ICTY/ICTR to isolate Africa-specific dynamics, the study engages debates in international criminal law, global governance, and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). It examines ICC jurisdiction as a site of contested sovereignty and racialized politics in international law. Three core claims are advanced. First, the concentration of ICC cases in Africa cannot be explained solely by crime incidence, but reflects the political economy of referrals, weak domestic insulation from external pressure, and uneven great-power exposure to court authority. Second, AU resistance has evolved into a sovereignty-centred critique of selective prosecution, particularly in response to indictments of sitting leaders. Third, complementarity often operates less as a pathway to domestic justice than as a contested arena in which states signal compliance while protecting political elites. The study concludes that reform debates must move beyond abstract universalism and address how Security Council power and arrest asymmetries shape prosecutorial outcomes. It further argues that domestic accountability support should be assessed by its impact on prosecutorial capacit