US takes over presidency at ICJ from Somalia

On Feb 9, 2021

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Monday elected American jurist Joan E Donoghue as the new president of the UN judicial organ, bringing to an end the term of Somalia’s Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, who has been at the helm since 2018.

Donoghue, a member of the ICJ since 2010, will be deputised by Russia’s Kirill Gevorgian, who replaces China’s Xue Hanqin in a 15-judge bench that also includes four other new judges elected last November by the member states of the United Nations.

One of her immediate tasks will be to preside over proceedings of a maritime boundary dispute between Somalia and Kenya, which is due for hearing on March 15 to 17 this year.

Somalia sued Kenya at the ICJ in 2014, seeking to redraw a maritime boundary in the Indian Ocean between the two states from the current south-easterly straight line to an easterly horizontal line. The area in question affects about 100,000km2 of sea in an area believed to have unexploited lucrative hydrocarbons.

The new 15-judge bench now includes three Africans including Uganda’s Julia Sequined. Judges of the Court are usually elected for an initial term of nine years and they are eligible for re-election once.

The new bench is composed of Donoghue, Gevorgian, Peter Tomka (Slovakia) Ronny Abraham (France), Mohamed Bennouna (Morocco), Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade (Brazil) and Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf (Somalia).

Others include Xue Hanqin (China) Julia Sebutinde (Uganda), Dalveer Bhandari (India), Patrick Lipton Robinson (Jamaica), James Richard Crawford (Australia), Nawaf Salam (Lebanon), Iwasawa Yuji (Japan) and Georg Nolte (Germany).

The Hague-based court rules on disputes between states over international treaties.

Edited by Olajumoke Adeleke