RIGHTS-UNITED NATIONS: New Challenges Face The World Court

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Branko Milinkovic

THE HAGUE, Feb 18 2000 (IPS) - The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, has elected a new team of leaders.

The new office bearers of this most senior international court with rich history, broad jurisdiction and refined jurisprudence, face major challenges ahead of them.

“In the years to come the Court faces a formidable task. Whereas in the 1970’s the floor of the Court was almost empty, today its docket contains 24 cases”, said the new President, Gilbert Guillaume, during his first press conference at The Hague this week.

Guillaume, French Judge, is a highly respected international lawyer who has been a member of the Court since 1987. He will preside over 15 judges who represent different legal traditions from all over the world.

The new Vice-President is a Chinese Judge, Shi Jiuyong, while new Registrar is a Belgian lawyer Philippe Couvreur.

Guillaume said about 12 cases are expected to be ready for hearing by the end of the year. He said he also intends to uplift the public profile of the Court and try to increase its financial resources.

“ICJ’s budget is approximately 10 million US Dollars per year, while its registry employs a total of 62 persons. These are very modest figures when compared, for instance, with those of the Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which has an annual budget of 100 million US Dollars and more then 900 employees”, Guillaume said.

He said that while the ICJ did not require such a huge staff complement, an additional number of translators, legal assistants and secretarial staff would help improve the efficiency of the Court.

The recently published annual report of the ICJ emphasised that in the period from Aug 1998 till July 1999, 18 new cases have been brought before the Court,

“The increased number of cases before the ICJ is a very positive development which shows a growing confidence in the Court”, says the out going vice president, Sri Lankan Judge Christopher Gregory Weeramantry.

According to Weeramantry the first part of the almost eight decades long history of the Court was mainly Euro-centered.

However this has changed. He said some of the pending cases now dealt with major international crises.

For example the former Yugoslavia brought forward a case challenging the legality of NATO’s (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) bombing campaign during the Kosovo crisis last year.

The Democratic Republic of Congo instituted the proceedings against Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda for alleged “acts of armed aggression” on its territory.

The current case-load also includes several very sensitive issues such as the alleged genocide during the wars in Bosnia- Herzegovina and Croatia and the dispute between Libya on the one side, and the United Kingdom and United States on the other side over aerial incident at Lockerbie.

Cases of territorial delimitation between neighboring states are traditionally present on the Court’s list.

Currently they include cases between Botswana and Namibia over Kasikili/Sedudu island, Indonesia and Malaysia over two islands on the Celebes sea, Qatar and Bahrain as well as Cameroon and Nigeria regarding both maritime and territorial delimitation.

If the number of cases before the Court continue to rise the Judges will have to adjust their methods of work – public hearings should not last too much, parties should reduce documentation they submit to the Court, judges should spend less time on their own deliberation whenever possible.

The Court’s Rules Committee is already looking into all these issues.

“I strongly feel that public profile of the Court should be raised since not enough people in the world know about this institution. Being more visible may help in resolving seemingly intractable conflicts that go on for decades or cases where there is the risk of armed confrontation”, Weeramantry says.

“This is why the Court needs to step up its public relations campaign”, he told IPS. “We have recently been able to use some modern communication facilities, like Internet, to reach wider public”.

When it comes to the media coverage of the ICJ’s activities, Judge Weeramantry says it is “less then one would desire”, especially in cases where the Court has been successful in resolving difficult disputes.

He cites the example of the case between Libya and Chad when a large strip of land was disputed between the two countries a few years ago.

While the Libyan army was in actual occupation of it, the ICJ held in favour of Chad. Within a short period of time, the two states agreed to a date on which they officially met on the site and the Libyan army formally withdrew.

“This was a noteworthy victory for international law. Unfortunately, it was scarcely covered by the international media. It received only few lines in the agency news, although it was a good example how could media bring to the world attention an event that represented considerable achievement of the international law at work”, he added.

One of the most relevant part of the Court’s jurisprudence in the last decade is handling international disputes in the field of environment, says Weeramantry.

He also expects that there will be much more litigation of this type in the future.

For example the case between Hungary and Slovakia in relation to the dam over river Danube has raised various environmental issues related to the use of rivers for the development purposes.

These issues have forced the Court to consider issues such as the rights of future generations and questions of environmental impact assessments, he said.