South Africa may surrender its role as host of this year’s BRICS summit in an effort to dodge international pressure to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes, according to reports in South African media this week.
As a party to the Rome Statute — the treaty underpinning the ICC — Pretoria would theoretically be obligated to arrest Putin and send him to the Hague for trial.
But China and India would face no such obligation, leading some South African officials to suggest handing the summit to Beijing. (Brazil — the fifth member of the bloc of major developing countries — is also an ICC member, ruling it out as an alternative host.)
The news highlights the delicate balance that South Africa has sought to strike in relation to the war in Ukraine.
Despite pressure from Western partners, Pretoria has opted to maintain ties with Moscow and insisted on maintaining a neutral position on the conflict.
…Regardless of where the BRICS summit takes place, it’s become increasingly clear that South Africa’s approach to the war — characterized by a focus on ending the conflict as soon as possible and an unwillingness to place all blame on Russia — resonates across much of the world.
“A regional conflict has not replaced eradicating global poverty as the world’s greatest global challenge,” Naledi Pandor, Pretoria’s minister of international relations and cooperation, said recently. “This is not the world we hoped for when the Cold War ended.”
Source:Responsible Statecraft
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