Speech of H.E. Mr. Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, President of the International Court of Justice, before the Security Council

SPEECH OF H.E. MR. ABDULQAWI AHMED YUSUF, PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL
COURT OF JUSTICE, BEFORE THE SECURITY COUNCIL
9 November 2018
Multilateralism and the International Court of Justice
Mr. President,
Mr. Secretary-General,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Mr. President,
1. Allow me at the outset to congratulate you and to congratulate the People’s Republic of
China for assuming the chairmanship of the Council during this month. I thank you also for taking
this initiative and for inviting me to participate in it.
2. Some would say that my participation in this debate from The Hague is possible because
of technology. Perhaps, but that is not the entire story. They forget about multilateralism.
Technology needs multilateral rules to be able to cross borders. The optical fiber technology that
carries digital data relies on submarine cables in various maritime jurisdictions. It is only through
multilateral rules, such as those set forth in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,
that we can make this viable. Even for the scheduling of this meeting, we all rely automatically on
time-zone rules which were established in a multilateral framework, as early as 1884, during the
International Meridian Conference.
3. Regulating global issues through a web of bilateral agreements has been tried in the past.
It never worked. The spider web simply collapses on itself. It produces no silk. At best, it leads to a
fragmented legal order composed of contradictory international legal obligations. Predictability,
stability and certainty of the rule of law disappear. That is why your initiative is timely today when
we are commemorating the end of the first world war, one hundred years ago, which gave a new
impetus to the development of multilateralism.
4. Multilateralism is the result of human experience and civilisation. It is the only path
forward in a world in which we have all become neighbours. For our Court, multilateralism is not
only the condition of its existence, it is also that of its proper functioning and effectiveness.
5. Bilateral agreements can create arbitral tribunals. But they cannot create judicial
institutions composed of an independent and impartial judiciary, representing the principal legal
systems of the world, and deciding cases on the basis of law. The Court, therefore, owes its very
existence to multilateralism.
6. For the functioning of the Court, multilateral conventions provide a large share of the law
applicable to disputes submitted to the Court. On the other hand the Court’s decisions remove,
uncertainties from international conventions by interpreting and applying the provisions of those
conventions.
7. Mr. President, in addition, some multilateral conventions of a regional nature such as the
1948 Pact of Bogota among Latin-American countries and the 1957 European Convention on the
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Peaceful Settlement of Disputes between States Parties give jurisdiction to our Court on disputes
arising in those regions of the world. Other conventions such as those that were characterized by
the Court as instruments of a universal or quasi-universal character in the Barcelona Traction case
give authority to the Court through their compromissory clauses to protect shared values of the
international community. This is the case of the 1951 Genocide Convention and other human rights
instruments, as well as all of the 1961 and 1963 Vienna Conventions on diplomatic and consular
relations.
8. With regard to its effectiveness, the Court has to rely on multilateral institutions, such as
the UN to ensure compliance with its decisions. This may be done by the Security Council under
Article 94 of the United Nations Charter. It was also done in the past by the Secretary-General at
his own initiative in the Cameroon v. Nigeria case.
Mr President,
Excellencies,
9. Decisions of the Court have made notable contributions to multilateralism. Allow me to
refer to three of them very briefly.
10. First, the Court has developed and clarified the law of treaties which make
multilateralism possible. It is the Court that established the object and purpose test to ascertain the
permissibility and validity of reservations to multilateral treaties, allowing a large participation to
multilateral conventions without jeopardizing the normative integrity of their core provisions.
11. Secondly, the Court clarified, in the Advisory Opinion on Reparation for injuries
suffered in the service of the United Nations, that multilateral organizations, such as the
United Nations, enjoy an international legal personality separate from that of their Member States.
This decision of the Court has strengthened the institutional pillars of multilateral organizations
including the United Nations.
12. Thirdly and finally, the Court contributed to the emergence of erga omnes obligations in
international law, when it distinguished between legal obligations owed to “the international
community as a whole” from those owed to particular States. In doing so, the Court enabled all
States parties to multilateral conventions containing such obligations to serve as guardians of the
compliance with those rules.
Mr. President,
13. To conclude, allow me to refer again to the Advisory Opinion on Reparation which I
mentioned a moment ago, in which the Court observed that “[t]hroughout its history, the
development of international law has been influenced by the requirements of international life, and
[that] the progressive increase in the collective activities of States has already given rise to
instances of action upon the international plane”.
14. The “requirements of the international life”, Mr. President and “the increase in the
collective activities of States” which the Court spoke of reveal the inadequacy of unilateral or
bilateral actions to address the challenges facing our increasingly interconnected world. They also
dictate the necessity of multilateral co-operation in a diverse and complex range of areas of
common concern to humanity. It is this common concern of humanity, recognized in many
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multilateral conventions, together with the shared values we all hold dear, which render imperative
the strengthening and consolidation of multilateralism as well as the rules and institutions
underpinning it.
15. I thank you.
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