7 News Belize

A Glimpse inside the ICJ
posted (November 27, 2018)
We all know Belizeans are going to vote in April on whether or not we should take our territorial dispute with Guatemala to the ICJ. And we all know that the ICJ is the International Court of Justice. But, what and where is that? For all that most of us know, it could be on the moon! Well, it's not; and we know because Jules Vasquez and a bunch of Belizean journalists went to The Hague to find the ICJ. Today in the Netherlands, they got a surprising level of access to the ICJ courtroom and the Peace Palace where it is headquartered. Jules Vasquez reports:

A small correction to what Jules said, there have been 179 cases heard by the ICJ. 17 are currently before the court.

Notably, today we learned that - as far as anyone at the court knows - no two countries have ever used a referendum to derive sovereign consent for going to the ICJ - so this is a first. And, again, we reinforced what we were told yesterday - that no previous ICJ case has ever had one country claiming half the others land mass. Usually cases deal with border or maritime disputes.

We'll have more on the ICJ tomorrow.

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7 News Belize