32 countries join Ukraine's lawsuit against Russia in UN court under Genocide Convention

The majority of judges at the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) have approved a decision whereby 32 states will join a lawsuit Ukraine has filed against Russia on the grounds of its violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Source: European Pravda with reference to a statement released by the press service of the UN International Court of Justice on 9 June

Fourteen of the judges voted for and one against. 26 EU member states - all except Hungary - have joined Ukraine’s lawsuit at the preliminary objection stage, along with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Lichtenstein and the UK.

However, the court unanimously rejected the US’s request to join Ukraine’s lawsuit against Russia at the preliminary objection stage.

The hearing of the first case brought by Ukraine against Russia, wherein Russia is accused of violating two UN conventions, started on 6 June and will end on 14 June. Consequently, the judgment may potentially be delivered in late 2023 or early 2024.

The proceedings concern the case Application of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Ukraine v. Russian Federation). Ukraine filed this lawsuit back in 2017.

In this lawsuit, Ukraine intends to prove that Russia has violated the aforementioned conventions by arming military groups of its puppet "republics" [the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics – ed.] in the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and implementing its policies regarding non-Russian ethnic groups in the occupied peninsula of Crimea.

In April 2017, the ICJ issued a provisional order obliging Russia not to restrict the rights of Crimean Tatars to preserve their representative institutions, including the Mejlis, and to ensure the accessibility of education in the Ukrainian language.

In November 2019 the ICJ rejected all Russia’s arguments concerning the jurisdiction of the court and the admissibility of the case, resulting in a full victory for Ukraine at that stage of consideration of the lawsuit.

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