The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will hold four days of public hearings in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case at The Hague. India and Pakistan will present their arguments before the top UN court during the hearings.
About:
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN).
Origin: It was established in June 1945 by the Charter of the United Nations and began work in April 1946.
HQ: The seat of the Court is at the Peace Palace in The Hague (Netherlands). Of the six principal organs of the United Nations, it is the only one not located in New York (United States of America).
Members: All UN members are its members.
Judges: The Court is composed of 15 judges, who are elected for terms of office of nine years by the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council.
Official languages: Its official languages are English and French.
Function:
The Court’s role is to settle, in accordance with international law, legal disputes submitted to it by States and to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by authorized United Nations organs and specialized agencies.
The Court can only hear a dispute when requested to do so by one or more States. It cannot deal with a dispute on its own initiative.
Subject matter: Sovereignty, boundary disputes, maritime disputes, trade, natural resources, human rights, treaty violations, treaty interpretations and more.
Parties to dispute:
Only States are eligible to appear before the Court in contentious cases.
The Court has no jurisdiction to deal with applications from individuals, non-governmental organizations, corporations or any other private entity.
However, a State may take up the case of one of its nationals and invoke against another State. The dispute then becomes one between States.
Are decisions of the Court binding?
Article 94 of the United Nations Charter provides that Judgments delivered by the Court in disputes between States are binding upon the parties concerned.
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