#sorry to disable reblogs - i know typing in the replies field is a pain.

[canmom]

genuine question - if South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the ICJ is successful in getting the ICJ to be like 'ok, you have to stop killing now until we sort this out', and Israel were like 'ehh i don't feel like it' and carried on as they have since October, what happens? whose job is it to actually enforce that? even within this system, can't the US just use its security council power to veto any judgement against Israel?

like, what mechanism would make the ICJ declaring 'yes, this is definitely legally a genocide' more forceful as a speech act than say, someone writing 'this is a genocide' in a newspaper? or is that basically all it is, a kind of theatre to make that accusation more public?

apparently the ICJ ruled against the US in favour of Nicaragua in 1986, ordering the US to give reparations for the whole contras thing. the US completely vetoed the judgement. and much more recently they also ruled in favour of Ukraine against Russia in 2023 and Russia don't seem too worried about that. in the absence of a 'monopoly on legitimate force' that can enforce its rulings, what is even the function of this kind of court?

I feel like my model of this whole machinery must be too crude somehow, because clearly South Africa's gov hope to get something out of winning this case.