Cape Town — The Gambian lawyer who is about to become chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has hit out at suggestions that the court has a bias against Africa.

"What offends me most," Fatou Bensouda told a forum in Cape Town, "is how quick we are to focus on the words of a few powerful people instead of the millions who are affected by abuses of power... The office of the prosecutor will go where victims need us."

Bensouda, currently the ICC deputy prosecutor, defended the court as an independent instrument with a valuable role to play not only in prosecuting human rights violators, but also protecting citizens from abuse.

"I believe in law as power for all, the ultimate weapon the weak have against the strong," she told a forum hosted by the Open Society Africa Foundations in Cape Town this week. Quoting Aristotle, Bensouda said "law is order, good law is good order," adding that recent events in Darfur, C'ote d'Ivoire and Libya showed the need for more international institutions.

She said the nation state acting alone cannot protect its citizens from crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes. The ICC - supported by 121 states in Africa, Europe and South America - had an important role to play.

To use the court's full potential, the rule of law should protect citizens, said Bensouda, citing the example of Thomas Lubanga, a former rebel leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the first person to be charged and convicted by the ICC. He was found guilty on March 14 of conscripting and using child soldiers under the age of 15 in active hostilities.

"The Lubanga case promotes the prevention of recruiting child soldiers," said Bensouda. Similarly, she said, the arrest of the DRC's Jean-Pierre Bemba, leader of the Mouvement de Liberation du Congo, on charges of crimes against humanity for rapes committed by soldiers under his authority should serve as a warning to other military commanders of the need to respect the law.