ICJ REJECTS NICARAGUAN CASE AGAINST GERMANY
May 2, 2024The top U.N. court rejected a request by Nicaragua to order Germany to halt military and other aid to Israel and renew funding to the U.N. aid agency in Gaza.
The International Court of Justice said that legal conditions for making such an order weren’t met and ruled against the request in a 15-1 vote, effectively siding with Germany, which told judges that it’s barely exporting any arms to Israel.
However, the 16-judge panel declined to throw out the case altogether, as Germany had requested. The court will still hear arguments from both sides on the merits of Nicaragua’s case, which alleges that, by giving support to Israel, Germany failed to prevent genocide in Gaza. The case will likely take months or years.
The court “remains deeply concerned about the catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” said Nawaf Salam, the court’s president.
He added that the court “considers it particularly important to remind all states of their international obligations relating to the transfer of arms to parties to an armed conflict, in order to avoid the risk that such arms might be used” to violate international law.
The German Foreign Office welcomed the ruling in a post on X.
But it added that Israel has the right to defend itself and said more than 100 hostages are still being held by Hamas, “which is abusing the people of Gaza as shields.”
The court noted that Germany had granted only four export licenses to Israel for weapons of war since the start of the conflict, two for training ammunition and one for test purposes, as well as one consignment of “3,000 portable anti-tank weapons.”
Nicaragua, a longstanding ally of the Palestinians, alleges that Germany is enabling genocide by sending arms and other support to Israel. The head of Nicaragua’s legal team, Carlos Jose Argüello Gómez, told reporters at the court that his country would press ahead with its legal arguments.
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English Script:
Nawaf Salam: The court by 15 votes to one find that the circumstances, as they now present themselves to the Court, are not such as to require the exercise of its power under Article 41 of the statute to indicate provision in measures.
Willem Marx: They (the court) said that therefore there was not a huge amount of indication that German support for the Israeli military was helping that Israeli military operate inside Gaza. Secondarily, the court has previously itself not yet ruled that Israel is violating that convention and therefore there was no legal standing right now for them to issue these so-called provisional measures against Germany.
Carlos Jose Arguello Gomez: The court specifically said that for the time being, they didn’t find sufficient evidence that at this moment it was necessary to get those measures. But the case continues. Germany, I know if you’ll notice also the court said Germany had asked there’s no jurisdiction, this case should be thrown out, taken from the list. And the court said that’s not true. So the court has merits. So, I mean, the case is very practically beginning at this point.
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