The International Court of Justice and the Responsibility to Protect: Learning from the Case of The Gambia v. Myanmar

Abstract

It is a commonplace in the R2P discourse to describe accountability measures as key means to implement the responsibility to protect. In particular, the International Criminal Court is regularly highlighted as a central actor, both in the literature, the annual R2P reports issued by the UN Secretary-General, and the subsequent debates in the UN General Assembly. Conspicuously absent from this conversation is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice (icj). This article examines the potential role of the ‘World Court’, as The Gambia in November 2019 started a new case under the UN Genocide Convention against Myanmar before the icj. Analysing the limitations and prospects and existing icj case-law, the article concludes that the International Court of Justice can make an important and unique contribution to the responsibility to protect.