U.K., Canada, Sweden, Ukraine take Iran to top UN court

Subject : International Relations

Section: International Organization

Concept :

The United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden and Ukraine have launched a case against Iran at the United Nations’ highest court over the downing in 2020 of a Ukrainian passenger jet and the deaths of all 176 passengers and crew.
The countries want the International Court of Justice to rule that Iran illegally shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 on January 8, 2020, and order Tehran to apologise and pay compensation to the families of the victims.

About International Court of Justice :

The ICJ is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN).
It was established in June 1945 by the Charter of the United Nations and began work in April 1946.
The court is the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), which was brought into being through, and by, the League of Nations.
After World War II, the League of Nations and PCIJ were replaced by the United Nations and ICJ respectively.
The PCIJ was formally dissolved in April 1946, and its last president, Judge José Gustavo Guerrero of El Salvador, became the first president of the ICJ.

Seat and role:

The ICJ is based at the Peace Palace in The Hague.
It is the only one of the six principal organs of the UN that is not located in New York City.
(The other five organs are the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, and the Secretariat.)
All members of the UN are automatically parties to the ICJ statute, but this does not automatically give the ICJ jurisdiction over disputes involving them.
The ICJ gets jurisdiction only if both parties consent to it.
The judgment of the ICJ is final and technically binding on the parties to a case.
There is no provision of appeal; it can at the most, be subject to interpretation or, upon the discovery of a new fact, revision.
However, the ICJ has no way to ensure compliance of its orders, and its authority is derived from the willingness of countries to abide by them.

Judges of the court

The ICJ has 15 judges who are elected to nine-year terms by the UN General Assembly and Security Council, which vote simultaneously but separately.
To be elected, a candidate must receive a majority of the votes in both bodies.
A third of the court is elected every three years.
The president and vice-president of the court are elected for three-year terms by secret ballot. Judges are eligible for re-election.
Four Indians have been members of the ICJ so far.
Justice Dalveer Bhandari, former judge of the Supreme Court, has been serving at the ICJ since 2012. Others being R S Pathak (1989-91), Nagendra Singh (1973-88), Sir Benegal Rau (1952-53).

India at the ICJ:

India has been a party to a case at the ICJ on six occasions, four of which have involved Pakistan.
They are:
- Right of Passage over Indian Territory (Portugal v. India, culminated 1960);
- Appeal Relating to the Jurisdiction of the ICAO Council (India v. Pakistan, culminated 1972);
- Trial of Pakistani Prisoners of War (Pakistan v. India, culminated 1973);
- Aerial Incident of 10 August 1999 (Pakistan v. India, culminated 2000);
- Obligations concerning Negotiations relating to Cessation of the Nuclear Arms Race and to Nuclear Disarmament (Marshall Islands v. India, culminated 2016); and
- (Kulbhushan) Jadhav (India v. Pakistan, culminated 2019).

The Genocide Convention:

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), or Genocide Convention, is an international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to enforce its prohibition.
It was the first legal instrument to codify genocide as a crime, and the first human rights treaty unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, on 9 December 1948.
The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951 and has 152 state parties.
The Genocide Convention was conceived largely in response to World War II, which saw atrocities such as the Holocaust that lacked an adequate description or legal definition.
The Convention defines genocide as an ‘intentional effort to completely or partially destroy a group based on its nationality, ethnicity, race, or religion.