THE HAGUE, Netherlands (CN) — The highest court of the United Nations moved forward with a case brought by Ukraine against Russia under the Genocide Convention, finding it could rule on a limited part of the complaint.
In a complicated decision, the International Court of Justice threw out Ukraine’s request to determine whether the Russian invasion was in breach of the postwar treaty, but accepted jurisdiction over whether Kyiv has itself committed genocide against Russian-speaking people in Eastern Ukraine.
"In the present case, even if the Russian Federation had, in bad faith, alleged that Ukraine committed genocide and taken certain measures against it under such a pretext … this would not in itself constitute a violation,” court President Joan E. Donoghue said in reading out the ruling.
Ukraine asked The Hague-based court to intervene just days after the 2022 invasion, using the novel argument that Russia was violating the 1948 Genocide Convention by falsely accusing Kyiv of committing genocide.
“The so-called civilized world ... prefers to ignore it as if there were none of this horror, genocide that almost 4 million people are being subjected to,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a late-night address on Feb. 21, 2022, explaining to the country why he had ordered troops into border regions of Ukraine.
As part of that complaint, Kyiv asked the court to adjudicate the truth of Putin’s claim. The 16-judge panel found that was the only part of the case it had jurisdiction over.
Ukraine still characterized the ruling as a victory. “It is important that the court will decide on the issue that Ukraine is not responsible for some mythical genocide, which the Russian Federation falsely alleged that Ukraine has committed,” Anton Korynevych, the leader of Ukraine’s legal team, told reporters after the hearing.
“This was a very complicated and technical ruling,” Melanie O’Brien, an associate professor of international law at the University of Western Australia, said in reaction to the decision. It took the court an hour to read out the 62-page decision.
Two weeks after the full-scale military operation began, the court ordered the Russian Federation to halt military operations, granting provisional measures requested by Ukraine.
Although the court found it did not have jurisdiction to rule whether the invasion violated the Genocide Convention, the order to stop the conflict still stands. Korynevych also stressed the importance of Russia abiding by that order. It is “the obligation of the Russian Federation to immediately suspend all the military activities in the territories of Ukraine,” he said.
Kyiv also had a mixed victory on Wednesday at the court. In a ruling that was mostly a win for Russia, the court found that Moscow partially breached two international treaties since it began occupying parts of Ukraine in 2014.
In that case, judges found that the Russian Federation failed to properly investigate claims of terrorism financing and violated a discrimination convention, but also rejected the majority of Kyiv’s claims.
While Ukraine’s military advisers are busy fighting off Russian aggression, the country’s legal experts have been searching for every possible avenue to bring Moscow to justice.
Ukraine also has several ongoing complaints against Russia at the Strasbourg-based court European Court of Human Rights, and the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and one of his deputies last year.
The court is expected to hold hearings on the merits of the case later this year.
Follow @mollyquell
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
-
Choice of law May 1, 2024