On 3 July 2024, the International Court of Justice issued an order in relation to the case of The Gambia v. Myanmar in which it declared that two interventions filed under Article 63 of the Court’s Statute were admissible. The first intervention had been filed jointly by Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The second intervention had been filed by the Maldives.
The case was instituted by The Gambia in November 2019 and concerns alleged violations of the Genocide Convention by Myanmar against the Rohingya group. In January 2020, the Court issued an order indicating a number of provisional measures. In July 2022, the Court found that it had jurisdiction to hear The Gambia’s claim and that the claim is admissible. Of particular note, it rejected Myanmar’s objection that The Gambia lacked standing to bring the case because all States parties to the Genocide Convention have a common interest in ensuring the prevention, suppression and punishment of genocide, and the obligations owed under the Convention are owed to all States parties.
In November 2023, the intervening States filed declarations of intervention pursuant to Article 63 of the Court’s Statute. This provision permits interventions by States which are parties to a convention which is in issue in a case before the Court. Interventions under Article 63 must be limited to matters of construction of the convention in question.
Although all the intervening States are parties to the Genocide Convention, Myanmar objected to the admissibility of the interventions on a number of grounds, including that: (i) the declarations of intervention went beyond the permitted scope of Article 63 because they addressed matters other than construction; and (ii) the joint declaration addressed provisions of the Genocide Convention which were not in question in the case.
Despite these arguments, the Court declared both of the interventions to be admissible. Its key findings include that: (i) there is no requirement that an intervention under Article 63 must be limited to points of interpretation that are in dispute between the parties; and (ii) to the extent that the declarations of intervention addressed matters other than the construction of the Genocide Convention, the Court would not consider such issues, but this did not render the interventions inadmissible as a whole. The Court stated that the Court would take into account references to rules and principles of international law outside the Genocide Convention only in so far as they may be relevant for the construction of the Convention’s provisions.
As a result of the Court’s order, the intervening States will have the opportunity to file their observations on the construction of relevant provisions of the Genocide Convention.
Alison Macdonald KC, Professor Dapo Akande and Naomi Hart act for the United Kingdom in relation to its intervention in this case.
