Georgia, Russia: Legal showdown at the International Court of Justice On September 13, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will start examining a Georgian lawsuit against Russia over alleged ethnic cleansing.
Submitted on August 12, 2008, the final day in the Georgian-Russian conflict, Moscow stands accused of violating the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The lawsuit also calls on the court to persuade Russia to facilitate the return of Georgian refugees to the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This paper's sources said that Russia plans to contest the court's jurisdiction and to note that Georgia failed to meet all the court's requirements before it submitted its case to the ICJ. A source at the Georgian Ministry of Justice said the convention had been chosen to justify Tbilisi's grievances against Russia because article 22 stipulates that all violations be examined by the ICJ. Moreover, the defendant is unable to block the case's examination. In September 2008, the court conducted initial public hearings on Georgia's lawsuit and ruled in Russia's favor. Then Tbilisi requested that the ICJ persuade Moscow to withdraw its troops from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, facilitate the return of Georgian refugees, guarantee their property rights, facilitate the reintegration of Sukhumi and Tskhinvali and compensate Georgia. In its October 15 ruling, the court declined to support Tbilisi's requests. An ICJ source said Russia had submitted its objections to the Georgian lawsuit and contested the court's jurisdiction on December 1, 2009. These objections will become the subject of these current hearings in the Hague. The Russian side will set out its stance first today during three-hour deliberations in line with the relevant procedures. The Georgian side will then have an opportunity to voice its objections tomorrow. The source said it would take the court between two weeks and several months to reach a verdict. A source close to the hearings said, instead of engaging with, and arguing against Georgia's claims, Moscow decided first to call for the case to be dropped in line with formal criteria. That is why Russia is now contesting the court's jurisdiction. Russian objections submitted to the ICJ suggest that the court should not examine the Georgian lawsuit because it has been artificially linked with the 1965 convention. Moscow's main legal argument is that Georgia had not accused Russia of racial discrimination against its population before it submitted the lawsuit, the source added. Although the UN, the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe and a mixed controlling commission for resolving the South Ossetian conflict had repeatedly examined "frozen" conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia before the 2008 war, Tbilisi did not voice any official complaints against Moscow. http://en.rian.ru/papers/20100913/160573797.html _______________________________________________ News mailing list n...@antic.org-snn http://lists.antic.org/mailman/listinfo/news
