The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ top court, has decided to consider a case initiated by Kyiv. In this case, Ukraine seeks a declaration from the ICJ affirming that it did not engage in genocide in eastern Ukraine. This move comes in response to Russia’s assertion, used as a pretext for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The ICJ will now proceed to examine the matter.
Recently, the judges determined that the court has jurisdiction over a limited aspect of the initial case. However, they rejected Ukraine’s plea to assess if the Russian invasion breached the 1948 Genocide Convention.
The 16-judge panel decided not to address immediately Ukraine’s claim regarding the Russian invasion. Instead, they opted to defer a ruling to a later stage on whether Ukraine committed genocide in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions now under Russian occupation in eastern Ukraine.
“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,” Ukraine’s representative Anton Korynevych told journalists at the ICJ.
Emphasizing the significance, he noted that the court’s emergency order from March 2022, directing Russia to cease military operations in Ukraine immediately, remains in effect.
Although the court’s rulings are definitive and carry legal weight, it lacks enforcement mechanisms, leading to instances where states, including Russia, have chosen to disregard them. During hearings in September of the previous year, Moscow’s legal representatives urged judges to dismiss the entire case, citing perceived flaws in Kyiv’s legal arguments and asserting that the court lacked jurisdiction.
During Friday’s proceedings, the judges accepted certain objections raised by Russia. However, they approved Ukraine’s plea for the court to declare that there is no “credible evidence that Ukraine is committing genocide in violation of the Genocide Convention” in eastern Ukraine. The case’s full hearing on the merits is anticipated to span several months.
Ukraine’s earlier argument asserted the absence of a genocide risk in eastern Ukraine, where it has been engaged in conflict with Russian-backed forces since 2014.
On Wednesday, Ukraine secured a minor triumph at the ICJ as the judges determined that Russia had breached U.N. treaties related to the financing of terrorism and discrimination in a separate case involving incidents from 2014.