For the last seat in the International Court Of justice (ICJ), India’s nominee, Dalveer Bhandari received an overwhelming backing from the members of the United Nations general Assembly. Defying the permanent member states of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) who supported Britain’s candidate, Christopher Greenwood.
This finally resulted in a state of deadlock since none of them could secure a requisite number of votes in the recent face off. Both of whom are seeking re-election to the ICJ.
One – third of the 15 member bench of the court are elected every three years, for a nine year long term. The elections are carried out simultaneously but separately at the UNGA and UNSC.
Of the total six candidates, others who got re-elected were Ronny Abraham of France, Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf of Somalia, Antonio Augusto Cancado of Trindade of Brazil and Nawab Salam of Lebanon were elected carefully keeping in line with the UN laws and after four rounds of obtaining clear absolute majority in the elections of both UNGA and UNSC on Thursday.
The UNGA and UNSC met separately for electing the last candidate of ICJ. After carrying out five rounds of elections, Greenwood of Britain received 9 votes whereas Bhandari could only get 5 in the UNSC. According to the rules the winner must secure at least 8 votes. Hence greenwood won with a majority in UNSC. Since Britain is a Permanent member of UNSC, they have an advantage.
In the elections at UNGA, Bhandari won win an absolute majority in all the five rounds. In fact he also improved his vote tally of 115 on Thursday to 121. An absolute majority in the UNGA requires only 97 votes. Greenwood secured a vote tally of 76 on Thursday which fell down to 68 in the latest round.
Both the UNGA and UNSC have announced that the election will be now convened at a later date. The meeting was adjourned after that.
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Noted Congress leader and former Top UN official Mr. Shashi Tharoor accused the UK of trying to neglect the will of the majority members of the UNGA.
“As the UN Security Council (SC) & General Assembly (GA) vote to choose a judge for the International Court Of Justice (#ICJ) between Indian & UK candidates, the legitimacy & effectiveness of the UN are at stake. The voice of the GA has been ignored too long,” he said in a tweet
He expressed that the decisions of the UN should reflect the will of the majority of the members and it should not be decided by some states who have long held privileges.
