The Hague, Feb 2 (EFE).- The International Court of Justice said Friday it has jurisdiction to rule on whether Ukraine has committed genocide against Russian speakers, which Russia has claimed to justify its invasion, but not on whether the invasion itself is illegal.
Ukraine brought the case to the court just days after the Russian invasion in February 2022, claiming that Moscow lied to justify its invasion by citing the need to stop an alleged genocide in eastern Ukraine.
Kyiv asked the United Nations’ top court to “rule and declare that there is no credible evidence that Ukraine is responsible for committing genocide in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention,” and the court found that it had jurisdiction to rule on the matter, contrary to Moscow’s rejection.
A final, legally binding decision on this subject is probably years in the future.
However, Kyiv also asked the ICJ to declare that Russia’s “use of force” and its “recognition” of the independence of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic” also violated the Genocide Convention, but the ICJ said it could not rule on these issues under that specific treaty because they fall outside its jurisdiction.
The refusal to rule on these aspects does not mean that the ICJ is condoning the Russian aggression against Ukraine, nor is it a ruling that Russia has not committed violations of international law under other treaties, it simply means that the ICJ sees no jurisdiction to rule on the basis of the specific Genocide Convention – which Kyiv used to initiate this case.
“In the present case, even if the Russian Federation had, in bad faith, alleged that Ukraine committed genocide and taken certain measures against it under such a pretext, which the respondent (Ukraine) contends, this would not in itself constitute a violation of obligations” under the Genocide Convention, said the court’s president, Joan E. Donoghue.
Ukraine hailed the decision as a victory.
“It is important that the court will decide on the issue that Ukraine is not responsible for some mythical genocide, which the Russian Federation falsely alleged that Ukraine has committed,” the head of Ukraine’s legal team, Anton Korynevych, told reporters.
In a show of international solidarity, 32 countries, including most of the European Union, Canada and Australia, had defended that the ICJ did have jurisdiction to rule on the entire case.
In a previous phase, and in response to Kyiv’s request for provisional measures, the ICJ demanded in a legally binding order in March 2022 that Russia cease military operations in Ukraine while the judicial process takes place, but Moscow ignored this demand. EFE
ir/ics/mcd