World Court Digest

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III.	The International Court of Justice
3.	THE PROCEDURE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE
3.11.	Intervention
3.11.2.	Article 62, Prerequisites in General

¤ Land and Maritime Boundary
between Cameroon and Nigeria
(Cameroon v. Nigeria)
Application by Equatorial Guinea
for permission to intervene,
Order of 21 October 1999

[p. ] 12. Whereas neither of the Parties objects to the Application by Equatorial Guinea for permission to intervene being granted;

13. Whereas, in the opinion of the Court, Equatorial Guinea has sufficiently established that it has an interest of a legal nature which could be affected by any judgment which the Court might hand down for the purpose of determining the maritime boundary between Cameroon and Nigeria;

14. Whereas, moreover, as a Chamber of the Court has already had occasion to observe,

"[s]o far as the object of [a State's] intervention is 'to inform the Court of the nature of the legal rights [of that State] which are in issue in the dispute', it cannot be said that this object is not a proper one: it seems indeed to accord with the function of intervention" (Land, Island and Maritime Frontier Dispute (El Salvador/Honduras), Application by Nicaragua for permission to intervene, Judgment of 13 September 1990, I.C.J. Reports 1990, p. 130, para. 90);

15. Whereas in addition, as the same Chamber pointed out,

"[i]t ... follows ... from the juridical nature and from the purposes of intervention that the existence of a valid link of jurisdiction between the would-be intervener and the parties is not a requirement for the success of the application. On the contrary, the procedure of intervention is to ensure that a State with possibly affected interests may be permitted to intervene even though there is no jurisdictional link and it therefore cannot become a party" (ibid., p. 135, para. 100);

16. Whereas, in view of the position of the Parties and the conclusions which the Court itself has reached, the Court considers that there is nothing to prevent the Application by Equatorial Guinea for permission to intervene from being granted;

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