On March 16, judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled Russia must halt military operations in Ukraine. This is the first judgment in a contentious legal dispute between Ukraine and Russia, with both countries accusing the other of committing genocide.
The ICJ was established in 1945 after the Second World War. It is the main judicial body of the United Nations and has a mandate to settle legal disputes between countries. It is composed of 15 elected judges who serve nine-year terms.
The court is intended to be less political than the other U.N. bodies like the General Assembly. The judges do not represent any country and they make decisions based on international law as set out in U.N. treaties, not politics.
The ICJ is different from two other international courts investigating abuses by Russia in Ukraine: the International Criminal Court and the European Court of Human Rights. While the ICC has jurisdiction over individuals accused of violating international criminal law like committing war crimes, the ECtHR has jurisdiction over countries within the Council of Europe accused of violating human rights set out in the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, rights that include civil and political rights like freedom of speech. Russia recently threatened to leave the council but was expelled before it could do so. The ICJ’s mandate is broader: It has jurisdiction over governments accused of violations under several bodies of international law.
Russia has...
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