(2000J Australian International Law Journal THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE THE COURT IN 2000 Snapshot At present, the Court is composed as follows: Gilbert Guillaume P; Shi Jiuyong V-P; Shigeru Oda, Mohammed Bedjaoui, Raymond Ranjeva, GCza Herczegh, Carl-August Fleischhauer, Abdul G. Koroma, Vladlen S Vereshchetin, Rosalyn Higgins, Gonzalo Parra-Aranguren, Pieter H Kooijmans, Francisco Rezek, Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh and Thomas Buergenthal JJ. On 7 February 2000, the Court elected Guillaume J as President and Shi J as Vice-President for a three-year term. Following the resignation of Stephen M Schwebel J effective from 29 February 2000, the General Assembly and Security Council on 2 March 2000 elected Mr Thomas Buergenthal for the remainder of Schwebel J's term, which will expire on 5 February 2006. On 10 February 2000, the Court elected Mr Philippe Couvreur as Registrar of the Court for a seven-year term following the resignation of Mr Eduardo Valencia-Ospina. The Deputy-Registrar is Mr Jean- Jacques Arnaldez. From January - November 2000, the Court held 29 public sessions and a large number of private, administrative and judicial meetings. During the same period as above, the Court inter alia rendered a Judgment on the merits in Case Concerning Kasikili/Sedudu Island (BotswandNamibia) and a Judgment on its jurisdiction in the Case Concerning Aerial Incident of 10 August 1999 (Pakistan v India). It made an Order indicating provisional measures in the Case Concerning Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v Uganda). On 31 July 2000, 23 cases remained on the Court's docket and they come fiom all over the world. Five of them are between African States, two between Asian States, ten between European States, one between Latin American States, and five are of an intercontinental character. The hearings for Qatar v Bahrain, the longest running case in the Court, began in 1991 and were finalised in June 2000 after five weeks of oral argument. The Court has retired to prepare its judgment in accordance with its internal judicial practice. The Court's budget for 2000 is approximately US$10 million, which [2000/ Australian International Law Journal represents in terms of the overall United Nations budget a percentage lower than that of 1946, whilst the Court's activities have increased exponentially since then. ' On 3 1 July 2000, there were 188 Parties to the Court's Statute, made up of the Member States of the United Nations and Switzerland. Sixty-two States have now made declarations (many with reservations) recognising the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court under Article 36(2) and (5) of the Court's Statute. They are Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Botswana, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, the Congo, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, Gambia, Georgia, Greece, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Japan, Kenya, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Nauru, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Senegal, Somalia, Spain, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Togo, Uganda, United Kingdom, Uruguay and ~u~oslavia.~ Currently, about 100 such multilateral conventions and 160 such bilateral conventions are in force. In addition, the Court's jurisdiction extends to treaties or conventions in force providing for reference to the Permanent Court of International ~ustice.~ In addition to the United Nations (General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Trusteeship Council, Interim Committee of the General Assembly), the following organisations are at present authorised to request advisory opinions of the Court on legal questions arising within the scope of their activities: International Labour Organisation; Food and Agriculture Organisation; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation; International Civil Aviation Organisation; World Health Organisation; World Bank; International Finance Corporation; International Development Associa- tion; International Monetary Fund; International Telecommunication Union; World Meteorological Organisation; International Maritime I Contrast the 2000 budget for the Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which is almost US$100 million. "he texts of the declarations filed by the above States will appear in the next edition of the International Court of Justice Yearbook in Chapter IV, Section I1 and the lists of treaties and conventions that provide for the jurisdiction of the Court will appear in Section 111. ' See Article 37 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice. [2000] Australian International Law Journal Organisation; World Intellectual Property Organisation; International Fund for Agricultural Development; United Nations Industrial Development Organisation; and International Atomic Energy Agency. New President - Gilbert Guillaume Guillaume J became the new President of the International Court on 7 February 2000. He has been a Member of the Court since 14 September 1987 and was re-elected for another term beginning on 6 February 1991. He was born in Bois-Colombes, France on 4 December 1930 and his legal education began with a Licence in Law from the University of Paris. He has held the position of Councillor of State from 1981-1 996 and several other distinguished positions including membership of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (since 1980). He is President of the French Branch of the International Law Association and Vice-President of the French Society for International Law. He is author of numerous works and articles and has delivered a course on "Terrorism and International Law" at The Hague Academy of International Law. At a press conference on 15 February 2000, Guillaume P stated: It is now one week since I was elected President of the International Court of Justice and it has been my wish to make contact with you rapidly in order to talk to you about the Court. It seemed to me both appropriate and agreeable to do so in the very chamber in which the Court holds its deliberations. International justice needs to be transparent and our meeting here does, I think, bear witness to that. As you know, the Court, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, is composed of 15 judges elected for nine years, one third of whom are eligible for re-election every three years. A partial re-election of this kind has just taken place and it has been our pleasure to welcome among our number a new judge, our Jordanian colleague Mr. Al-Khasawneh. The new Court took ofice on 6 February, the anniversary of the date on which our now distant predecessors did so in 1946. The Court elected me President on 7 February for three years and on the same day it elected our Chinese colleague, Judge Shi, as Vice- President. It then appointed a new Registrar, Mr. Philippe Couvreur. [2000] Australian International Law Journal And finally, it elected its chambers and committees. These in turn appointed their presidents and chairpersons. The Court is therefore ready now to start work afresh. In the years to come it will be faced with a formidable task: whereas in the 1970s the floor of the Court was almost empty, today its docket contains 24 cases. At first sight this figure seems negligible when compared with the number of cases pending in national courts or even in the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Communities. However, we must remember that the International Court of Justice is an institution of a completely different kind. It gives advisory opinions to certain international organizations. It is the forum of first and last resort for such disputes as States agree to bring before it - disputes to which generally they attach great importance. Very often they wish to demonstrate to public opinion in their countries that they have done everyhng in their power to win their case, and have presented every possible argument. The documentation submitted to the Court is therefore complex and voluminous; in the year 2000, for example, we are required to decide a territorial and maritime dispute between Qatar and Bahrain after an exchange of written pleadings amounting to several thousand pages and five weeks of hearings. The 24 cases at present on our docket come from every continent. They also differ enormously in content. In some cases - those between Cameroon and Nigeria, Indonesia and Malaysia, and Qatar and Bahrain - the disputes to be settled are territorial and maritime. In others the disputes have a totally different dimension. Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, for example, accuse Yugoslavia of having violated the United Nations Genocide Convention. Yugoslavia in turn makes comparable charges against Bosnia-Herzegovina. And it also accuses eight member countries of NATO of using unlawful force in Kosovo. Likewise the Democratic Republic of the Congo has brought charges of aggression against Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda. In the past the Court has sometimes been reproached for acting slowly. This complaint, and I wish to stress this, seems unjustified today. The Court can act speedily and often has ruled within days on applications for provisional measures submitted by States. It is true that in other [2000] Australian International Law Journal circumstances several years of preparation have been necessary before judgment could be handed down. But these delays have not been caused by excessively lengthy deliberations; in most if not all cases they have resulted from the parties' wishes. In some cases the parties have asked the Court for long time limits in which to file their memorials, as in the Lockerbie proceedings brought by Libya against the United States and the United Kingdom. Parties have even asked the Court to suspend proceedings while they pursue parallel negotiations. It is clearly for the Court to determine time limits for filing memorials. But it cannot treat the States parties before it in the same way as national courts treat their parties and in particular it cannot impose short time limits on parties where they agree in requesting longer ones.