The headquarters of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, this month. Photo credit: Peter Dejong/Associated Press
This week’s hearings saw repeated clashes between Ukraine and Russia over whether the United Nations’ highest court has jurisdiction to hear a complaint that Moscow abused the 1948 Genocide Convention to justify its invasion of Ukraine last year to justify.
Kiev is asking the court to order Russia to stop its attacks, even though Moscow is unlikely to comply.
Shortly after the invasion, Ukraine filed its complaint with the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the United Nations’ highest judicial body. The complaint said Russia falsely accused the Ukrainian government of committing genocide against Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine and then used that accusation as a pretext for launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
In five days of hearings that ended Wednesday, delegates from Ukraine said there was no genocide against its citizens before the invasion and accused Russia of using disinformation and distorting the meaning of the genocide convention. They called on the court, whose job it is to deal with legal disputes between nations, to use its jurisdiction to help end the “illegal war.” International lawyers and diplomats took part in the hearings.
It was Ukraine’s second attempt to ask the court for help. The court’s judges had already ordered Russia to stop its military action in March 2022. Moscow snubbed the court, refused to participate in these hearings and disregarded the court order.
This time Russia sent a large delegation. Some diplomats said Moscow’s presence reflected a perceived legal threat and political calculation as Moscow’s diplomats push to rejoin the United Nations Human Rights Council next month. The council expelled Russia after the invasion last year.
Lawyers for Russia addressed the 16 judges in the case and asked the court to drop the lawsuit. They said Ukraine’s arguments were “hopelessly flawed” and that Russia had based its actions in Ukraine not on genocide but on its right to self-defense as defined in the United Nations Charter. The Russian side said there was no dispute about genocide, so there was no case.
Russia’s arguments are unlikely to prevail, international lawyers said, in large part because of statements from President Vladimir V. Putin and senior Russian officials.
For example, Ukraine’s lawyers repeatedly referred to a televised address by Mr. Putin on February 24, 2022, the day of the invasion, in which he announced “a special military operation” in eastern parts of Ukraine. According to Putin, the purpose of the military operation is to “protect people who have been subjected to ill-treatment and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.”
Russian lawyers dismissed Putin’s words as political speech, arguing that it was not the same as invoking the Genocide Convention.
Although the hearings focused only on jurisdiction, lawyers and diplomats said they were important because the outcome could have implications for the intentions of a group of countries to create a special international tribunal on Russian aggression and war crimes in Ukraine. Exceptionally, 32 governments submitted comments supporting Ukraine’s argument. The group included most European Union countries, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
It could take several months or longer for judges to decide whether they can move forward with the case.
Harold Koh, a law professor at Yale University and a member of the Ukrainian legal team, urged judges to act quickly. “The jurisdictional issues before you are neither narrow nor difficult,” he told the court. “And while you deliberate, the world awaits an early hearing on the matter.”
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