Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent.
For well over a year, activists have been buzzing about the potential for a new tribunal in the Central African Republic to foster a tradition of domestic accountability and deter fighting of the sort that has rocked the chronically unstable nation since 2012. The court’s prosecutor, the Congolese military magistrate Toussaint Muntazini Mukimapa, arrived in the country in February 2017, and hopes were high that he would be able to move fast in building cases.
Yet as recently as this week, important procedural steps enabling the tribunal, known as the Special Criminal Court, to do its work had yet to be taken. Specifically, lawmakers needed to adopt the court’s rules of procedure to pave the way for investigations.