The International Court of Justice (ICJ or Court) plays a critical role in the humanization of international law by interpreting core international human rights treaties, international humanitarian law treaties, and customary international law rules. While the Court’s primary function is resolving disputes between States and providing advice to the main organs of the United Nations and specialized agencies, its jurisprudence has increasingly defined the scope of State responsibility for human rights violations.
Judge Dire Tladi’s presentation will analyze the main contributions of ICJ’s engagement with human rights issues, starting with the concepts of elementary considerations of humanity and the concept of erga omnes obligations—duties owed to the international community as a whole, and findings relevant to the following key legal contributions:
- Principles concerning basic human rights, such as the prohibition of genocide, racial discrimination, slavery, and torture.
- The right of peoples to self-determination.
- The outlawing of acts of aggression.
Since the 1960s, but especially in the last two decades, cases based on the protection of community interests have been brought before the ICJ, based on the grounds that any State has a legal interest in protecting these rights and may invoke State responsibility against violators. The analysis and discussion will include cases that have been resolved by the Court, avoiding discussing the merits of those cases that are pending.
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Short bio
Dire Tladi is a Judge of the International Court of Justice, in The Hague. Prior to that, Tladi was Professor of international law and holder of the NRF SARChI Chair in International Constitutional Law at the University of Pretoria. He was previously Chair and member of the UN International Law Commission and its Special Rapporteur on Peremptory Norms of General International Law (Jus Cogens). He was President of the South African Branch of the International Law Association. He was also Special Adviser to the South African Foreign Minister. He was legal adviser to the South African Foreign Ministry and the legal counsel to the South African Mission to the United Nations in New York. He has published widely in international law. Dire Tladi is also the author of two works of fiction.