Kenya’s battle with the World Court is the perfect example of how global institutions are losing relevancy in an increasingly conservative world.

Around the world and especially in Africa societies are becoming conservative and authoritarian. Oligarchies are consolidating power. Minorities are growing submissive. Particularly in Africa this means the Strongman reemerges.

Uhuru Kenyatta is such. Very much like his father, Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s first president for 15 years until his death, Uhuru has masterfully consolidated his power to the point that he is almost invincible.

Kenyatta isn’t quite yet the benevolent dictator like his father, but I imagine after the next election he will be. Afterwards, subsequent elections will be fairly meaningless or simple window dressing.

The reason this is happening is for the same reason it started this way at Independence. Turmoil is considered more expensive and damaging than the increased opportunity that might be unleashed by movements like the Arab Spring.

Kenya under the current Kenyatta has prospered by the geopolitical metrics of economy that seem to govern the world. The World Bank projects 4.7% growth this year, and increasing growth in the years ahead.

While this is down from a few years ago, it’s impressive when you consider the challenge of the Somali War. As that successfully fought war continues positively the literally hundreds of thousands of successful Somali businesspeople in Kenya return to Somali causing a drain on growth… for good reasons.

Kenya’s education and health care policies are among the most progressive in Africa. Womens rights are more progressive in Kenya than almost anywhere elsewhere in Africa except South Africa, and were it not for the highest people in the current administration (e.g., Uhuru Kenyatta) the LGBT community would likely be facing as horrific oppression as it does in neighboring countries like Uganda and Rwanda.

But Human Rights Watch, like me, equivocates Kenya’s appearance of progressiveness with its patent immoralities and lack of democratization.

The Kenyan government under Kenyatta has systematically undermined the World Court’s prosecution of Kenyatta and his Vice-President. The evidence that existed two years ago, collected by the World Court, was damning: Kenyatta was guilty of crimes against humanity. It was eventually how he came to power.

But since he’s been in power the dozen or so witnesses, many of them in witness protection programs in Europe, recanted or disappeared. Pressure on their families back home seems to have been the reason.

So now, there is no evidence. Without evidence, there’s no case.

Yesterday, Kenyatta returned jubilant from The Hague. It’s likely the last time he will go there.

While ICC prosecutors are arguing for various censures of the Kenyan government for its lack of cooperation, other Heads of State in Africa are rallying behind Kenyatta. If the ICC fails to relent, Africa as a whole might leave the ICC.

The many global institutions like the ICC which appeared last century to guarantee the human rights of all global citizens now seem almost irrelevant.

Within Kenya police power has exploded exponentially. Summary arrests and neglect of existing laws protecting the innocent like habeas corpus are routinely ignored. More and more there seems to be only a single authority: Uhuru Kenyatta.

And yet that seems to be what if we dare generalize the “Kenyan public” wants, even those who are theoretically in the opposition.

Stability, however unequal, rules the day.

I think it’s public fatigue. War fatigue, election fatigue, countless fatigues that were so promising only a few years ago but proved futile by today. The world, for whatever underlying reasons, is moving away from freedom in order to avoid conflict.

Of course it’s true here at home, too, as well as Kenya. By the way, yesterday China became the world’s largest economy.