Universal jurisdiction is a principle of international law that allows a state’s courts to prosecute individuals for international crimes1 committed anywhere in the world, even though neither the offender nor the victims are linked by nationality to the prosecuting state. Although its origins can be traced back to the figure of the pirate, 2 the scope and application of universal jurisdiction remain contested under contemporary international law. While many within the human rights community lobby states to claim the right of universal jurisdiction on the basis that perpetrators of egregious crimes must be held accountable, those who take a more cautious approach point to the risk inherent in the right, which challenges the foundational doctrine of international law–the sovereign equality of states. These are equally compelling claims that can be neither reconciled nor avoided.

The exercise of the principle of universal jurisdiction has caused friction between African states and Western jurisdictions. In 2000, for example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was confronted by Belgium’s expansive universal jurisdiction laws when a Belgian magistrate issued an international arrest warrant for the DRC’s Foreign Minister on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed outside Belgian territory in which no Belgian nationals had been victims. This