The ICJ was looking at whether the declaration of independence
First, a caveat: I am not an expert in international law, just a journalist. But I have spent today poring over the choice words of 14 international judges, yesterday gathered in The Hague, in an attempt to untangle the implications of their surprise decision.
What is clear from their text is that many of my fellow reporters misunderstood the point of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice.
The ICJ was looking at whether the declaration of independence was legal under international law, not Kosovo’s independence. “The Court does not consider that it is necessary to address such issues as whether or not the declaration has led to the creation of a state or the status of the acts of recognition in order to answer the question put by the General Assembly,” the judges wrote.
So headlines like ‘Kosovo’s Independence Legal’, which were liberally peppered across the world media, didn’t exactly hit the spot.
Does this matter? Well, for the sake of accuracy and international law, of course it does. But the impact on the particular Serbia-Kosovo situation, I feel, would have been the same even if the question had been posed differently. Serbia’s aim was to challenge Kosovo’s independence, irrespective of the specific question.
