#icj ruling

States must tackle fossil fuels, the world’s top court has ruled, and failing to prevent harm to the climate could result in them being ordered to pay reparations. In a landmark advisory opinion published on Wednesday, the international court of justice (ICJ) said countries must prevent harm to the climate system and that failing to do so could result in their having to pay compensation and make other forms of restitution. Presenting the 133-page document to a packed court at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the ICJ president, Yūji Iwasawa, said climate breakdown had severe and far-reaching consequences which affected natural ecosystems and people. “These consequences underscore an urgent existential threat,” he said. The unanimous opinion covers a wide range of matters under international law. It says states are liable for all kinds of activities that harm the climate, but it takes explicit aim at fossil fuels. It says that a state’s failure to take appropriate action to protect the climate system from greenhouse gas emissions, including through the production and consumption of fossil fuels, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies, “may constitute an international wrongful act which is attributable to that state”. Climate campaigners and representatives of vulnerable countries were delighted with the outcome. Speaking outside the court, Vanuatu’s minister for climate change, Ralph Regenvanu, said it was a milestone moment for climate justice. “It has confirmed what vulnerable nations have been saying and have known for so long,” he said. “That states do have legal obligations to act on climate change.”

continue reading

Can they sue one for enabling someone else to commit war atrocities against their people?

Or even actions those governments have taken against people in their country as attempted sabotage?

The top United Nations court on Monday sided with Equatorial Guinea in a decades-long dispute with Gabon over three tiny islands in potentially oil-rich waters. The two west African nations have been squabbling over the 30-hectare (74-acre) island of Mbanie and two smaller low-lying islets, Cocotiers and Conga, since the early 1970s. The islands themselves are tiny and virtually uninhabited but lie in an area potentially rich in oil and gas. The dispute dates all the way back to 1900, when then colonial powers France and Spain signed a treaty in Paris setting out the borders between the two countries. But Gabon argued that a later treaty, the 1974 Bata Convention, then fixed the islands' sovereignty in their favour. However, the International Court of Justice ruled that the Bata Convention "invoked by the Gabonese Republic is not a treaty having the force of law... and does not constitute a legal title." It said that the legal title to the islands was held by Spain, which then passed to Equatorial Guinea upon independence in 1968. Unlike most countries appearing before the ICJ in The Hague, which rules in disputes between states, Guinea and Equatorial Guinea agreed to ask judges for a ruling in an effort to find an amical solution. The two countries asked the court to decide which legal texts are valid -- the Paris Treaty of 1900 or the Bata Convention of 1974.

The Netherlands-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Monday dismissed Sudan's claim that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had fueled genocide in Darfur. Last month, Khartoum argued before the UN's top court that the UAE was violating the Genocide Convention by supplying weapons to paramilitary forces. What did the court say? The judges sided with the UAE in its ruling, accepting its arguments that the UN court "manifestly lacked" jurisdiction to rule on the case. Sudan had made a request to the court for urgent measures against the Gulf nation. However, the UAE had firmly argued that the court was not legally competent to rule on the matter. When the UAE signed up to the UN's Genocide Convention in 2005, it entered a "reservation" to a key clause allowing one country to sue another at the ICJ over disputes. This reservation meant the Hague-based ICJ had no power to intervene in the case, the Emiratis said.