Judge Akua Kuenyehia of Ghana was the presiding judge of Pre-Trial
Chamber I, the panel of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which
announced the decision on Wednesday to order Bashir's arrest on charges
of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising out of the war in
Darfur. The other judges were Judge Anita UÅ¡acka of Latvia and Judge
Sylvia Steiner of Brazil.
Kuenyehia is the first vice-president of the ICC, second in seniority to the court president, Judge Philippe Kirsch of Canada.
The eldest of six siblings, Kuenyehia was the daughter of a school
principal. She has been quoted as having criticized her father for
having been a polygamist.
She studied at the University of Ghana and at Oxford University in the
United Kingdom. She was called to the bar in 1971, began work as a
lawyer in 1972 and has served both as an academic and a practicing
lawyer. She has taught on criminal law, international human rights law
and public international law, and is also a specialist in gender law.
When appointed to the court in 2003, she was dean of law at the
University of Ghana where she had lectured for seven years. She helped
set up the country's first legal aid centre for indigent women and
through a women's law group introduced training in legal literacy for
West African women.
Kuenyehia is affiliated to a range of women's organizations, including
the group Women, Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF). Her children
have established a foundation in her honour in Ghana which is committed
to educating and empowering women.
She has written in a greeting on the foundation's website: Through
this foundation, there is a greater opportunity to provide higher
education and training for… girls and I believe that in the long term
the multiplier effect will be great. We will be creating a pool of
young women who will carry the message of the usefulness of education
to their communities and families and our country will be the richer
for it.
Kueyehehia has contributed to several publications and co-authored
Women and Law in Sub-Saharan Africa (2003) with Cynthia Grant Bowman.
In the pre-trial division of the ICC, she is one of the judges who
deals with the confirmation of charges and assessing evidence against
accused persons. When she was re-nominated to the ICC after her first
term, she said in a questionnaire that among the challenges the new
court faced were to establish its integrity, credibility and
acceptability in the face of the misgivings on the part of some of the
comity of states.
She added: I think that by maintaining an objective approach and
focusing on the task of the Statute I shall be able to meet the
expectation of fairness and
Her term ends in 2015.
allafrica.
Post published in: Uncategorized