Bangladesh's right of intervention in the Genocide Convention cases

On 14 January 2024 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed ‘the opportunity to file a declaration of intervention in due course’ in South Africa v Israel. This piece, written days later, sets out what that would actually involve.

The distinction that matters is between two articles of the Statute of the International Court of Justice. Article 63 gives a party to a convention the right to intervene where the construction of that convention is in question, and the construction the Court adopts then binds the intervening state. Article 62 permits intervention where a state has an interest of a legal nature that may be affected, and lies in the Court’s discretion. An intervention on the meaning of the Genocide Convention proceeds under article 63, and it is a right rather than a request.

What follows from that is worth stating plainly, and the piece states it: a state intervening on construction is arguing about the meaning of obligations that will bind it too.

The Convention it turns on is the one running through my Rohingya work since 2018.