Is the Russian invasion of Ukraine illegal? It is on this question that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) must decide this Wednesday during a hearing from 4 p.m. (3 p.m. GMT) in The Hague, where it sits. The legal request was launched urgently by kyiv after February 24. The Ukrainian government wants the highest court of the UN, created in 1946 to settle disputes between states, to take emergency measures, known as conservatories, to order Russia to “immediately suspend military operations”.
kyiv believes that Russia illegally justified its invasion by falsely alleging genocide against Russian-speaking populations in the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. “Russia must be stopped, and the court has a role to play in stopping that,” Ukraine’s representative Anton Korynevych told a hearing.
The Kremlin speaks of “self-defense”
Russia declined to appear at the ICJ hearings into the case on March 7-8. But in a written document, Moscow refuted the court’s jurisdiction over Ukraine’s claim. Russia claims that it does not fall within the scope of the 1948 Genocide Convention, on which kyiv bases its case.
“The government of the Russian Federation respectfully requests the Court to refrain from indicating provisional measures and to remove the case from its docket,” Moscow said. Russia added that she did not appear before the magistrates because she did not have enough time to prepare. And the invasion in Ukraine is an act of “self-defense”.
A verdict that will surely not be respected
The judgments of the ICJ are binding and cannot be appealed, but the court has no means of enforcing them. The main judicial body of the UN bases its conclusions mainly on treaties and conventions. “It is unlikely that the ICJ will not respond to Ukraine’s demands, at least to some extent or fully,” said Marieke de Hoon, assistant professor of international criminal law at the University of Amsterdam.
Before addressing the merits of the dispute between the two countries, which could take years, the ICJ only has to determine at this stage whether there is a prima facie dispute over the interpretation of the convention. about the genocide, she observes. It will be “not difficult” for the court to rule that this criterion has been met, says Marieke de Hoon. Will Russia take this judgment into account? “That’s a whole other question,” she says.
Source: 20minutes
