Top UN court tells Moscow to halt Ukraine invasion

France24 – AFP, 16 March 2022 

Kyiv dragged Moscow to the UN's top court days after Russia's attack
on February 24 Phil nijhuis ANP/AFP

The Hague (AFP) – The UN's top court on Wednesday ordered Russia to suspend its invasion of Ukraine, saying it was "profoundly concerned" by Moscow's use of force. 

"The Russian Federation shall immediately suspend military operations that it commenced on 24 February on the territory of Ukraine," pending the final decision in the case, presiding judge Joan Donoghue told the International Court of Justice. 

"The court is profoundly concerned about the use of force by the Russian Federation which raises very serious issues in international law," Donoghue told a hearing in The Hague. 

Kyiv dragged Moscow to the UN's top court days after Russia's attack on February 24. 

Ukraine accuses Russia of illegally trying to justify its war by falsely alleging genocide in Ukraine's Donetsk and Lugansk regions. 

Kyiv then asked the court to take provisional measures ordering Russia to "immediately suspend the military operations." 

"Russia must be stopped, and the court has a role to play in stopping that," Ukraine's representative Anton Korynevych told the ICJ last week. 

The hearing on Wednesday comes as the number of refugees fleeing Ukraine topped three million and Russian forces step up strikes on residential buildings in Kyiv.

 At the same time, Kyiv said it wanted its security to be guaranteed by international forces, as it rejected proposals pushed by Russia for it to adopt a neutral status comparable to Austria or Sweden. 

'No genocide evidence'

Russia snubbed hearings on March 7 and 8, arguing in a written filing that the ICJ "did not have jurisdiction" because Kyiv's request fell outside of the scope of the 1948 Genocide Convention on which it based its case. 

Moscow also justified its use of force in Ukraine, saying "it was acting in self-defence." 

The ICJ was set up after World War II to rule on disputes between UN member states, based mainly on treaties and conventions. 

Although its rulings are binding, it has no real means to enforce them. 

A full hearing into the content of the case could still take years, they added. 

Judges on Wednesday also ordered Moscow to ensure that military or irregular armed units "take no further steps" in furthering its offensive. 

But "whether Russia will oblige is an entirely different question", said Marieke De Hoon, assistant international criminal and public law professor at the University of Amsterdam. 

The case is also separate from a Ukraine war crimes investigation launched by the International Criminal Court (ICC), a separate tribunal also based in The Hague.

Top U.N. Court Rejects Balkan Genocide Claims

Naharnet Newsdesk, AFP, 3 Feb 2015

The U.N.'s highest court on Tuesday rejected rival claims of genocide by former foes Croatia and Serbia in landmark rulings over the bloody Balkans wars of the 1990s.

International Court of Justice chief judge Peter Tomka dismissed Zagreb's claim that Serb forces committed genocide during Croatia's war of independence.

He made a similar ruling in a counter-claim by Belgrade over a Croatian counter-offensive that forced 200,000 Serbs to flee after the last major battle of the 1991-1995 war.

The case had been described by Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic as perhaps one of the "most important events" determining his country's relations with Croatia.

Zagreb dragged Belgrade before the ICJ in 1999 on genocide charges linked to the war in Croatia during the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

Serbia was accused of ethnic cleansing as a "form of genocide" in the town of Vukovar and other areas, leading to large numbers of Croats being displaced, killed or tortured and their property destroyed.

About 20,000 people died in the conflict, one of several bloody wars that shook the Balkans in the 1990s.

Vukovar was captured after a three-month-long attack by the Yugoslav army (JNA) and Serb rebels.

After its fall, about 22,000 non-Serbs were expelled, and about 350 people from the Vukovar region are still reported missing.

Zagreb had wanted the ICJ judges to order Belgrade to pay compensation.

Belgrade responded with a counter-suit in 2010, saying about 200,000 ethnic Serbs were forced to flee when Croatia launched a military operation to retake its territory in 1995.

Following Zagreb's counter-offensive, called Operation Storm, the proportion of ethnic Serbs in Croatia shrank from 12 percent to four percent.

Belgrade was outraged in 2012 when Operation Storm's Croatian military commander, Ante Gotovina, was acquitted on appeal before the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

"The irony is that Croatia... which with its forceful separatism, triggered an avalanche of the horrid civil war in the former Yugoslavia, is accusing someone else of genocide," Serbia said in a statement as the case was being heard last year.

So far the ICJ, which rules in disputes between states, has recognized only one genocide case since opening its doors in 1946.

Genocide is the most serious of international crimes but also the hardest to prove.

In 2007 the court ruled that genocide had taken place in 1995, at Srebrenica in neighboring Bosnia, when almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered and their bodies dumped in mass graves by Bosnian Serb troops that overran a U.N.-protected enclave.

The decisions in the current case, which was heard in March last year, were reached by a 17-judge bench.

Both Belgrade and Zagreb had said ahead of the verdict that they would accept the ruling.

Croatian Justice Minister Orsat Miljenic had said that Zagreb's main goal was to "present what happened in the war and that was aggression against Croatia".

Serbia's Dacic said on Sunday: "This will be one of perhaps the most important events for our bilateral relations with Croatia."

"It will probably be the end of a process that has lasted for 15-20 years (and) will put an end to both sides' fight to prove who the worst criminal is."

"Maybe we'll have an opportunity to leave the past behind and turn towards the future."

Related Article:

ICJ dismisses genocide claims by Serbia, Croatia

Marshall Islands sues nine nuclear powers over failure to disarm

Pacific nation that was site of 67 nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958 accuses states of 'flagrant denial of human justice'

theguardian.com, Julian Borger, diplomatic editor,  Thursday 24 April 2014, 11.11

Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, where a 15-megaton device equivalent to a thousand
Hiroshima blasts, detonated in 1954. Photograph: US Air Force - digital version

The Marshall Islands is suing the nine countries with nuclear weapons at the international court of justice at The Hague, arguing they have violated their legal obligation to disarm.

In the unprecedented legal action, comprising nine separate cases brought before the ICJ on Thursday, the Republic of the Marshall Islands accuses the nuclear weapons states of a "flagrant denial of human justice". It argues it is justified in taking the action because of the harm it suffered as a result of the nuclear arms race.

The Pacific chain of islands, including Bikini Atoll and Enewetak, was the site of 67 nuclear tests from 1946 to 1958, including the "Bravo shot", a 15-megaton device equivalent to a thousand Hiroshima blasts, detonated in 1954. The Marshallese islanders say they have been suffering serious health and environmental effects ever since.

The island republic is suing the five "established" nuclear weapons states recognised in the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) – the US, Russia (which inherited the Soviet arsenal), China, France and the UK – as well as the three countries outside the NPT who have declared nuclear arsenals – India, Pakistan and North Korea, and the one undeclared nuclear weapons state, Israel.

The NPT, which came into force in 1970 is essentially a compact between the non-weapon states, who pledged to not to acquire nuclear weapons, and the weapons states, who in return undertook to disarm under article VI of the treaty.

Although the size of the arsenals are sharply down from the height of the cold war, the Marshall Islands' legal case notes there remain more than 17,000 warheads in existence, 16,000 of them owned by Russia and the US – enough to destroy all life on the planet.

"The long delay in fulfilling the obligations enshrined in article VI of the NPT constitutes a flagrant denial of human justice," the court documents say.

The Marshall Islands case draws attention to the fact that the weapons states are currently in the process of modernising their nuclear weapons, which it portrays as a clear violation of the NPT.

The case against Britain, which has an estimated total inventory of 225 warheads and is in the process of replacing its submarine-launched Trident arsenal, states that: "The UK has not pursued in good faith negotiations to cease the nuclear arms race at an early date through comprehensive nuclear disarmament or other measures, and instead is taking actions to improve its nuclear weapons system and to maintain it for the indefinite future."

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's general secretary, Kate Hudson, said: "The nuclear-armed states continue to peddle the myth that they are committed to multilateral disarmament initiatives, while squandering billions to modernise their nuclear arsenals. The UK government's plans to replace Trident make a mockery of its professed belief in multilateral frameworks – and now in addition to huge public opposition in the UK, it will also face an international legal challenge to expose its hypocrisy."

A huge dome is shown in 1980 covering a crater left by one of the

43 nuclear blasts on Runit Island, in the Marshall Islands, the fallout

 from which is expected to last 25,000 years (US Defence Nuclear Agency/

AFP/File)

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