Daniel wants to understand something that sounds simple but unravels into a whole architecture of international law the moment you pull the thread. What does the World Court actually do, and how did it end up hearing a genocide accusation against Israel? Specifically, how did South Africa bring the case, which states joined in and what was their role, and what are the actual legal and procedural steps the Court follows from filing to judgment. He's asking us to use this case as a map of the institution itself.
And it's a perfect case for that, because it hits nearly every procedural mechanism the ICJ has. Jurisdiction by treaty clause, provisional measures, third-party intervention, the enforcement gap. It's all there.
So let's start with what the World Court even is, because the name alone causes about ninety percent of the confusion.
The World Court is the International Court of Justice. It's the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, it sits in The Hague, and it does exactly one thing: it settles legal disputes between states. Not individuals, not corporations, not NGOs. State versus state. And here's the part that surprises people: its jurisdiction is consensual. A state can't be dragged before the ICJ unless it has agreed, somewhere, somehow, to be there.
Which is the opposite of what most people imagine when they hear "World Court." They picture a global supreme court with mandatory jurisdiction over everyone. That court doesn't exist.
Right. And this is where the confusion with the International Criminal Court comes in, because they're both in The Hague, they both deal with international law, and their names sound interchangeable. The ICC prosecutes individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide. It's a criminal court. The ICJ is a civil court for states. The ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant in May twenty twenty-four. That's a separate proceeding entirely. The ICJ case we're talking about is South Africa versus Israel, state against state, under the Genocide Convention.
So the ICC puts people in docks. The ICJ tells countries they've breached treaties. Different buildings, different dockets, different consequences.
And the consequences piece matters. The ICJ's judgments are binding. Article ninety-four of the UN Charter says every member state undertakes to comply with the Court's decision. But if a state doesn't comply, the only enforcement mechanism is the Security Council. And the Security Council has a veto. So you have a binding judgment with no police force, enforced by a political body where the state you're trying to enforce against might have a permanent friend with a veto.
Built-in teeth, no jaw.
That's the structural weakness. It shapes every case, and we'll come back to it. But first, let's get into how South Africa actually got this case before the Court, because the jurisdictional mechanism is the whole game.
December twenty-eighth, twenty twenty-three. South Africa files an Application Instituting Proceedings against Israel. The legal basis is one article in one treaty. Article nine of the Genocide Convention.
Article nine is what's called a compromissory clause. It says that any dispute between contracting parties about the interpretation, application, or fulfillment of the Convention shall be submitted to the ICJ at the request of any party to the dispute. That's the key phrase: "at the request of any party." It means you don't need both states to agree to go to court for this specific dispute. If you're both parties to the Convention, either one of you can drag the other before the ICJ. Consent was given when you ratified the treaty.
So South Africa didn't need Israel's permission. Israel had already given it, in nineteen forty-eight when it signed the Convention, and more specifically in nineteen fifty-one when it withdrew its reservation to Article nine. That reservation would have blocked compulsory jurisdiction under the clause. Israel pulled it.
And that matters enormously, because Israel doesn't accept the ICJ's general compulsory jurisdiction. If South Africa had tried to bring a case under some other legal theory, Israel could simply say, we never consented to this Court hearing disputes with us. Article nine closed that door. It's a pre-existing consent baked into a treaty both states ratified.
Which is why South Africa chose the Genocide Convention specifically. Not the Geneva Conventions, not some other humanitarian law instrument. The Genocide Convention has that automatic jurisdictional hook.
And this was strategic. South Africa alleged that Israel's military operations in Gaza violated its obligations under the Convention, specifically the duty to prevent and punish genocide. The Application itself ran eighty-four pages. It detailed what South Africa called genocidal acts, including killing Palestinians, causing serious bodily and mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction. Israel's position was that this was a gross distortion of the Convention, that its operations targeted Hamas, not civilians, and that the allegations were baseless.
But here's the procedural move that made this case move fast. South Africa didn't just file the main case. It also requested provisional measures.
Provisional measures are the ICJ's version of an emergency injunction. The requesting state has to show that there's a real and imminent risk of irreparable harm, and that the Court has at least a plausible basis for jurisdiction. The Court doesn't need to decide the merits. It just needs to decide whether the situation is urgent enough to order temporary protections while the full case grinds forward.
And the timeline on this was compressed. Hearings were held January eleventh and twelfth, twenty twenty-four. Two days of oral arguments. Then on January twenty-sixth, the Court issued its Order.
The Order is worth walking through, because it's the document most people heard about in the news and it's widely misunderstood. The Court found it had prima facie jurisdiction under Article nine. It found that South Africa's claims were plausible, which is a low bar. Plausible doesn't mean likely. It means the rights being claimed exist under the Convention and the facts alleged could fall within them. Then the Court ordered six provisional measures.
What were they?
Israel had to take all measures within its power to prevent acts of genocide. It had to ensure its military didn't commit genocidal acts. It had to prevent and punish direct and public incitement to genocide. It had to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to Gaza. It had to preserve evidence related to the allegations. And it had to submit a report to the Court within one month on the steps taken.
The vote on these was striking. Fifteen to two on most measures. Judge Sebutinde from Uganda voted against all of them. Judge Barak, Israel's ad hoc judge, voted against several.
And the ad hoc judge mechanism is another piece of ICJ procedure people don't know about. If a state is party to a case and doesn't have a judge of its nationality on the bench, it can appoint one. Israel appointed Aharon Barak, former president of its Supreme Court. He sits for this case only. He voted with the majority on two measures, including the humanitarian aid provision, which is... that's a detail that got lost in the noise.
So the Court didn't rule that genocide was occurring. It said the claim is plausible enough to warrant emergency orders while we figure this out.
And this is the single biggest misconception about the whole case. Headlines said "World Court rules Israel is plausibly committing genocide." That's not what the Order said. It said the rights claimed by South Africa are plausible. That's a statement about the legal framework, not a factual finding. The Court explicitly said it was not making a determination on whether genocide was occurring. That's for the merits phase.
Which takes years.
Which takes years. And that brings us to the procedural timeline. After the provisional measures Order, the case moves into the written pleadings phase. South Africa files its Memorial, which is the detailed statement of facts and law supporting its case. That was submitted in October twenty twenty-four. Then Israel files its Counter-Memorial, responding to each allegation and raising its own legal arguments. That's due sometime in twenty twenty-five. After that, the Court may authorize a Reply and a Rejoinder. Then oral hearings. Then the Court deliberates and issues a judgment on the merits. We're probably looking at twenty twenty-seven or twenty twenty-eight before there's a final ruling.
And the provisional measures stay in effect the whole time.
They do. And the Court can modify them if circumstances change. South Africa has already gone back to the Court multiple times requesting additional measures, particularly around the humanitarian situation and the Rafah operation. The Court issued additional orders in March and May of twenty twenty-four.
So the case is alive and moving, but in slow motion. Now let's talk about the other piece Daniel asked about. Which states joined, and what does joining even mean?
This is Article sixty-three of the ICJ Statute. When a case involves the interpretation of a multilateral treaty, any other state that's a party to that treaty has the right to intervene. And they don't need permission from either of the main parties. The Genocide Convention has over one hundred fifty parties. So any of them can walk in and say, we have views on what this treaty means.
And over a dozen did.
By August twenty twenty-four, the list included Nicaragua, Colombia, Libya, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, Turkey, Chile, the Maldives, and several others. Each filed a Declaration of Intervention. And here's what's crucial: they don't become parties to the dispute. They can't add new claims or expand the case. Their role is limited to submitting written observations and making oral arguments on the interpretation of the Convention itself.
So they're not co-plaintiffs. They're more like... amicus briefs with a seat at the table.
The content of these interventions is fascinating, because they can't just say Israel is guilty. They have to argue about what the Genocide Convention means. What does "intent to destroy" require? Can genocidal intent be inferred from a pattern of conduct? What obligations does the Convention impose on states during active hostilities?
And different states come at this from completely different angles. Nicaragua's intervention, filed in March twenty twenty-four, argued for a broad reading of the Convention's obligations. But Nicaragua's own history with the ICJ is... complicated. They famously won a judgment against the United States in nineteen eighty-six over the Contras, and the US simply ignored it and vetoed the Security Council enforcement resolution.
Right. So you have states intervening that have themselves been on both sides of ICJ enforcement failures. Turkey's intervention focused on the definition of genocide and the evidentiary standard for proving intent. Spain emphasized the erga omnes character of the Genocide Convention's obligations, meaning they're owed to the entire international community, not just to the directly affected state.
Erga omnes is the legal doctrine that lets South Africa bring this case at all. South Africa has no direct stake in Gaza. It's not a victim, it's not a neighbor, it's not a party to the conflict. But the Genocide Convention creates obligations that every state party owes to every other state party. So any state can enforce them.
And that's what makes this case a landmark. It's the first time a state has brought a genocide case to the ICJ against another state where the applicant has no direct connection to the conflict. South Africa isn't claiming its own nationals were harmed. It's claiming the Convention gives it standing to enforce obligations owed to everyone.
Which is either a noble evolution of international law or a recipe for politicized litigation, depending on where you sit.
Probably both. And that tension runs through the whole case. The Genocide Convention was drafted in nineteen forty-eight, in the shadow of the Holocaust. The drafters were thinking about Nazi Germany. They weren't thinking about a state with no direct stake bringing a case against another state during an ongoing armed conflict. The legal machinery is being used in ways its architects never imagined.
Let's talk about what happens if the Court eventually rules against Israel on the merits.
The judgment is binding. Israel would be under a legal obligation to cease any conduct found to violate the Convention and to make reparations. But then we're back to Article ninety-four of the UN Charter. If Israel doesn't comply, South Africa goes to the Security Council. And the United States has a veto.
Which it would almost certainly use.
We have a precedent. In two thousand four, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion finding that Israel's construction of a wall in the occupied Palestinian territory was contrary to international law. The General Assembly asked the Security Council to act. Nothing happened. The wall is still there.
So you get a binding judgment that changes nothing on the ground, but shapes the language of international law for decades.
That's the ICJ's real power. It's not a police force. It's an authoritative interpreter of what international law means. When the Court says something, even if it can't be enforced, it becomes the reference point. Future treaties, future cases, UN resolutions, academic commentary, diplomatic negotiations. They all cite the ICJ. The Court's judgments are slow, but they're sticky.
That brings me to something I want to sit with. The Court ordered Israel to submit a report within one month on its compliance with the provisional measures. Did it?
Israel did submit a report. It's confidential, so we don't know what's in it. But South Africa has repeatedly argued to the Court that Israel is not complying, which is why they've gone back for additional measures.
You have this cycle. The Court orders something. The state either complies or doesn't. If it doesn't, the applicant goes back to the Court. The Court issues more orders. The state may or may not comply. And the enforcement lever is a Security Council that's structurally paralyzed on anything involving a major power's ally.
That's the system as designed. The drafters of the UN Charter wanted the Court to settle legal disputes, but they wanted the Security Council to handle enforcement. They assumed the permanent members would cooperate. They didn't anticipate the Cold War, let alone the current geopolitical landscape.
The ICJ is a court that can tell you you've broken the law, explain exactly how, and then watch you ignore it while the cop in the corner shrugs.
That's... not inaccurate. But I'd push back slightly. Even unenforced judgments have effects. They shape the political cost of non-compliance. They provide a legal framework for sanctions, for diplomatic pressure, for domestic court cases in third countries. The two thousand four Wall opinion didn't stop the wall, but it's been cited in courts all over the world. It shaped the BDS movement's legal arguments. It informed the ICC's subsequent investigation.
The judgment becomes a tool that other actors pick up and use, even if the Court itself can't swing it.
That's where the interventions under Article sixty-three become strategically important. Nicaragua, Colombia, Turkey, Spain. They're not just filing legal briefs. They're signaling that they consider the Genocide Convention's interpretation to be a matter of global concern. If the Court eventually rules against Israel, those intervening states have already gone on record supporting a particular reading of the Convention. They can cite that ruling in their own diplomacy, their own UN statements, their own domestic legislation.
It's like building a coalition around a legal interpretation before the interpretation is even issued.
Right. And that's what makes this case different from, say, the Gambia's genocide case against Myanmar. That case also used Article nine, also involved a state with no direct stake. But the interventions here are much more numerous and much more politically charged. The Myanmar case has interventions from a handful of states. This one has become a kind of rolling diplomatic event.
Let's pause on Myanmar for a second, because it's the closest parallel. The Gambia, a tiny West African state, brought a case against Myanmar in twenty nineteen over the Rohingya. Also under the Genocide Convention, also using Article nine. The Court issued provisional measures in January twenty twenty. The case is still in the preliminary objections phase. Five years and counting.
That timeline tells you what to expect here. The South Africa-Israel case is moving faster because the Court prioritized the provisional measures request, but the merits phase will still take years. South Africa's Memorial was filed in October twenty twenty-four. Israel's Counter-Memorial is due sometime in twenty twenty-five. After that, there could be preliminary objections. Israel might argue the Court lacks jurisdiction or that the dispute isn't ripe. Those get briefed, argued, and ruled on separately. Then oral hearings on the merits. Then the judgment. We're looking at twenty twenty-eight at the earliest.
During all of that, the conflict continues, the facts on the ground change, and the Court is asked to rule on events that may be years in the past by the time it speaks.
That's the inherent tension in international adjudication during active conflicts. The Court is designed for disputes that have cooled. The Genocide Convention's compromissory clause doesn't wait for cooling. It lets a state file while the alleged genocide is ongoing. That's the point of provisional measures. But it creates this strange situation where the Court is issuing orders about a live conflict, with incomplete information, while the legal machinery of the merits phase crawls forward.
The information problem is real. The Court doesn't have its own fact-finding arm. It relies on what the parties submit, what UN agencies report, what NGOs document. In the provisional measures phase, the evidentiary standard is lower. For the merits, the Court will need to make factual findings about specific incidents, specific chains of command, specific statements by officials. That's a massive undertaking.
It's where the plausibility finding from the provisional measures Order gets weaponized in public discourse. People say the Court "ruled" that genocide is "plausibly" occurring and treat it as a finding of fact. It's not. It's a threshold determination that the case can proceed. The merits phase could still result in a finding that no genocide occurred.
Or that it did. The point is we don't know yet, and neither does the Court.
Right. And that uncertainty is the whole reason the case exists. If it were obvious either way, there'd be nothing to litigate.
To pull back to Daniel's question. The World Court hears state-versus-state disputes under treaties where states have consented to its jurisdiction. South Africa got in through Article nine of the Genocide Convention, a pre-existing consent Israel gave when it ratified the treaty and confirmed when it withdrew its reservation in nineteen fifty-one. The case moved fast on provisional measures, which the Court ordered in January twenty twenty-four. Then over a dozen states intervened under Article sixty-three to argue about what the Convention means, without becoming parties to the case. Now we're in the written pleadings phase, with a final judgment years away, and even when it comes, enforcement runs through a Security Council where the veto is always lurking.
That's the architecture. And the thing I keep coming back to is that this case is testing the limits of a treaty designed in nineteen forty-eight. The drafters of the Genocide Convention were thinking about the Holocaust. They created a mechanism where any state party could enforce the Convention against any other state party. They probably weren't imagining a world where a state with no connection to a conflict would bring a case against another state during active hostilities, with a dozen other states piling in to argue about definitions.
Yet here we are. The machinery works exactly as designed. Whether the output changes anything is a different question.
That's the question worth sitting with. But before we go further, I think we need someone who's actually been inside that machinery.
Hilbert: The pleadings phase is where everything actually happens.
Hilbert: I was a junior legal officer at the ICJ in the late nineties. Worked on the Nuclear Weapons advisory opinion. My job was to summarize the written submissions from over forty states. You know how many pages that was? I stopped counting at four thousand.
Hilbert: Everyone talks about Article nine like it's the magic key. Article nine gets you in the door. The Memorial is where you win or lose. And a Memorial in a genocide case. That's not a legal brief. That's a history book with footnotes. South Africa's probably ran fifteen hundred pages. Maps, witness statements, satellite imagery, expert reports on pattern evidence. The Court doesn't just read it. They have a committee of judges, usually three or four, who go through every footnote. Every footnote. I've seen judges send memos back to the Registry because a citation was to the wrong paragraph.
The wrong paragraph.
Hilbert: Wrong paragraph, wrong edition, wrong translation. The French and English versions of a treaty don't quite align and suddenly you're in a three-week argument about a semicolon.
You worked on the Nuclear Weapons opinion. That's the one where the Court said nuclear weapons are generally unlawful but couldn't decide if they're unlawful in extreme self-defense.
Hilbert: The president's vote broke the tie. Seven to seven, and he cast a second vote. That's in the rules.
A tiebreaker from the bench.
Hilbert: The coffee machine in the Registry broke the same week the judges were deliberating. I'm not saying the two things are connected.
You're not saying they're not connected either.
Hilbert: I'm not saying they're not connected. What I am saying is that the interventions under Article sixty-three are the most interesting part of this case, and the coverage misses why. An intervening state can't just say Israel is guilty. They have to argue about what the Convention means. So you get Nicaragua arguing that genocidal intent can be inferred from a pattern of conduct. You get Spain arguing about erga omnes obligations. You get Turkey arguing about the evidentiary standard. Same side, completely different legal theories.
Hilbert: The judges read all of it. Every intervention. Every footnote. And then they sit in deliberation and try to build a judgment that addresses every argument without contradicting itself. It takes years because it has to. You can't rush a document that's going to be cited for the next fifty years.
The slowness isn't a bug.
Hilbert: It's the product. The judgment is the product. It has to survive being picked apart by every international law scholar on earth. The Court knows that. They write for the audience of fifty years from now, not for tomorrow's headlines.
Did the Nuclear Weapons opinion survive?
Hilbert: It's still cited. The ambiguity was the point. The Court couldn't agree on the extreme self-defense question, so it didn't answer it. Sometimes the most honest thing a court can say is "we don't know."
Which is a kind of answer in itself.
Hilbert: It's an answer most people hate. But it's the one they had.
In this case, the Court's already done something similar with the provisional measures. Plausible rights, not findings of fact. A holding pattern while the real work happens in the pleadings.
Hilbert: The real work is happening right now, in a building in The Hague, with junior legal officers summarizing fifteen hundred pages of South Africa's Memorial and preparing summaries for judges who will spend months on the interpretation of a single phrase. "Intent to destroy." Three words. Hundreds of pages of argument about what they mean.
And the coffee machine.
Hilbert: The coffee machine is probably still there. It was a Jura. Swiss. Very reliable.
The Court keeps working, the pleadings pile up, and the case inches forward. But what does it all mean in the end?
The open question is what happens if the Court rules against Israel on the merits. The judgment is binding. Israel would be under a legal obligation to cease any violative conduct and make reparations. But enforcement runs through the Security Council. The United States has a veto. We've seen this movie before. The two thousand four Wall advisory opinion. The Court said the wall was illegal. The General Assembly asked the Security Council to act. Nothing happened.
You could get a landmark ruling that changes exactly nothing on the ground.
Or it changes things indirectly. The Wall opinion didn't stop the wall, but it shaped the legal conversation for two decades. It was cited in domestic courts, in UN resolutions, in the ICC's subsequent work. A judgment in this case would do the same thing. It would become the reference point for what the Genocide Convention means in the context of armed conflict. Every future case, every treaty negotiation, every diplomatic statement would cite it.
The precedent cuts both ways. If the Court rules that the Genocide Convention can be used this way, by states with no direct stake, during active hostilities, we'll see more of these cases. The Gambia-Myanmar case was the first. This is the second. There will be a third.
That's the real legacy. Not whether this specific case changes anything on the ground in Gaza. It's whether it opens the door to a whole new category of international litigation. Proxy genocide cases, brought by states with no connection to the conflict, using a treaty mechanism designed for a different era.
The single biggest misconception people hold about this case is that the ICJ ruled Israel is committing genocide. It didn't. It ruled that South Africa's claims are plausible enough to warrant emergency orders while the case proceeds. The merits haven't been decided.
The second misconception is that the World Court is the same thing as the International Criminal Court. They're different institutions, different mandates, different defendants. The ICJ settles disputes between states. The ICC prosecutes individuals. Conflating them misses everything about how either one works.
This has been My Weird Prompts. Thanks to our producer Hilbert Flumintop.
We'll be back soon. If you want to send us a question, email the show at show at my weird prompts dot com.
