11 February 2024
Why Nicaragua’s Article 62 Intervention in South Africa v. Israel is Potentially Unhelpful
On 23 January 2024, Nicaragua applied for permission to intervene in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel). Nicaragua's application will drag proceedings out one way or another. Potentially it means the Court must hear and decide upon a third version of events, clouding South Africa’s original case. If this case is really about addressing what the Court described as a ‘human tragedy’ in Gaza and not just about political point-scoring, Nicaragua, by trying to help, may just have made things worse. Continue reading >>
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21 July 2020
‘All nations must be considered to be civilized’
Even though Art. 38 (1)(c) ICJ Statute is supposed to remain the starting point for the identification of general principles of international law, Special Rapporteur Vázquez-Bermúdez suggests avoiding the reference to ‘civilized nations’. Getting rid of the explicit reference to the standard of civilization remains merely cosmetic as long as international sources doctrine does not simultaneously reflect the persisting influence of colonial ideas. Decolonizing international sources doctrine requires remedying Eurocentrist conceptions of what constitutes ‘the principal legal systems of the world’ and understanding the role of the idea of a legal system in the standard of civilization. Continue reading >>
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