chaithetics:

ICJ, Security Council and What the ICJ Ruling Means

I want to start by saying that the recent ICJ ruling isn’t enforceable, but we can make it useful if we choose to. It’s a landmark decision in international law that we can mobilise for our activism. We’ve now seen Britain resume funding of UNRWA. And this ruling is something that is much more tangible for trying to convince governments to place diplomatic and economic sanctions on Israel, demanding ceasefires, recognising Palestine etc. 

More on that below but I’m now going to explain a bit more about that and some of the UN bodies/structure stuff as I saw a couple of reblogs on this post have questions about what this means and what the ICJ’s powers really are. (This post responding to a question about the original post has some information as a much shorter read)

There’s a lot of flaws with the United Nations System (the General Assembly, Security Council, UN Secretariat, International Court of Justice, Trusteeship Council, and the Economic and Social Council), it acts as a tool of neocolonialism for the interests of the global powers, especially the Western powers, its binding/enforcement status makes it superficial, is often arguably undemocratic, and has a poor separation of powers. In this long read (I’m sorry) I’m mainly going to be talking about the Security Council and International Court of Justice (ICJ). 

The Security Council technically has greater enforcement powers than the ICJ and can technically apply them to ICJ rulings if they’re taken to the Security Council. But the five permanent members of the UN Security Council USA, UK, China, France, and Russia have veto powers. 

This has been justified for reasons like maintaining international political stability and to ironically prevent US domination but it has been understandably criticised for being undemocratic and also for preventing action to stop crimes against humanity and war crimes as this veto means that the UN can’t take action against these permanent members and their allies. 

Nicaragua v. United States of America[1986] was one of the biggest ICJ cases. It ruled that the US has violated international law by supporting the Contras (right-wing rebellion group) in their rebellion against the Nicaraguan government and mining of the Nicaraguan harbours. The ICJ ordered the US to pay reparations to Nicaragua, which the US refused to do. Nicaragua then took their case to the Security Council to try and make them enforce the ICJ’s ruling. To no one’s surprise, the US used their veto powers and vetoed this at the Security Council. It then went to the UN General Assembly and passed as a non-binding resolution urging US to follow the rulings. 

Recently, we saw the US use their veto power earlier in the year to block immediate ceasefire resolutions from other countries.

The ongoing case South Africa v. Israelwith South Africa accusing Israel of being in violation with the Genocide Convention. The Genocide Convention is an international treaty that basically says as a state, you have obligations to prevent, stop, and not commit genocides and if you do, there are consequences. The Genocide Convention was born from the atrocities that happened during World War II with the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide etc. Genocide became a crime against international law in 1946 and the Genocide Convention was signed in 1948 but became effective in 1951. 

The scope of the Genocide Convention has been raised as an issue in a few cases. And cases of genocide taken to the ICJ are pretty complicated with the findings. It’s something they find very hard to find a state guilty of and are hesitant to do. There’s a few different reasons for that but this post is already super long and I’m trying to keep it short. One of the first cases that was submitted to the UN as an alleged violation of the Genocide Convention was the ‘ We Charge Genocide’ paper written by the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), which accused the United States of America of genocide against black Americans under the genocide convention, the CRC paper cited lynching, police brutality, inequalities in health, disenfranchisement of black people in the south (it was over a decade after this paper did black women get the right to vote in 1965), and legal discrimination. It was rejected by the UN for being a misuse and was laughed at by the US government and Press, accusing it of being exaggerated and even as an attempt to advance communism. It’s a paper that’s worth a read and also has an interesting history and legacy worth looking into. The US was never a really big fan of the Genocide Convention, they signed 30+ years later and have since withdrawn. 

 In Bosnia and Herzegovnia v Serbia and the Montenegro[2007], the ICJ found that the Srebrenica massacre was a genocide but the ICJ did not find that the Serbian government was responsible or complicit in the genocide. They were still found in breach of the convention though for not cooperating with UN bodies and for failing to prevent the genocide and acquitted Serbia. The ICJ rejected Bosnia’s request for reparation repayments. 

These two papers/cases are some of the bigger ones that I think show how the ICJ is hesitant to and struggles to define and hold states accountable with violations of the Genocide Convention. 

The findings of the recent ICJ ruling and their ordering of Israel to return land, leave settlements and remove settlers, are not binding. Israel does not need to comply! And with a refusal of this, the ICJ ruling could potentially be taken to the Security Council to try and make it more enforceable, but it is likely that if that situation happened, the US would veto that resolution.  

This current ICJ ruling is still a landmark for International Law and carries political weight. Since this ruling we’ve seen the British government say they will resume funding to UNRWA (they stopped this after Oct 7th). 

I said it before but the ruling isn’t enforceable but we can still make it useful. It carries the political weight of

We need to continue advocating so that there is a free Palestine in the lifetime of every single living Palestinian, they deserve it and we owe it to them. 

Israel and its supporters now have international law saying that what they’re doing is wrong, they can no longer hide behind grey legal matter. This is political and justice ammunition that we can mobilise for activism to put pressure on our governments, especially those of us with western governments, governments who have been complicit, tried to play both sides etc. We need to use this to pressure out governments, contact our head of governments, different representatives and ministers to place economic and diplomatic/political sanctions on Israel, recognise the state of Palestine, withdraw recognition of the state of Israel, demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, create and approve Palestinian visas, increase Palestinian aid funding etc. 

The west no longer has grey legal matter to continue what they’re doing, especially with plausible deniability and the narrative they’ve been subscribing to. They can’t hide behind this grey area as what they’re doing directly contradicts and violates international law. 

Thanks for reading this far if you made it, I will answer genuine questions but I will delete, report and block any comments and asks that are anti-Arab, zionist, Islamophobic, racist, and/or antisemitic.

ICJ says Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal