Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law Logo Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law

You are here: Publications Archive World Court Digest

World Court Digest

III. The International Court of Justice
2. THE JURISDICTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE
2.6. Agreement in Regard to Jurisdiction in
the Course of the Proceedings

¤ Application of the Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
(Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Yugoslavia),
Preliminary Objections, Judgment of 11 July 1996,
I.C.J. Reports 1996, p. 595

[pp. 620-621] 40. Lastly, at a later stage of the proceedings, Bosnia and Herzegovina advanced two related arguments aimed at basing the Court's jurisdiction in this case on still other grounds.
According to the first of those arguments, Yugoslavia, by various aspects of its conduct in the course of the incidental proceedings set in motion by the requests for the indication of provisional measures, had acquiesced in the jurisdiction of the Court on the basis of Article IX of the Genocide Convention. As the Court has already reached the conclusion that it has jurisdiction on the basis of that provision, it need no longer consider that question.
According to the second argument, as Yugoslavia, on 1 April 1993, itself called for the indication of provisional measures some of which were aimed at the preservation of rights not covered by the Genocide Convention, it was said, in accordance with the doctrine of forum prorogatum (stricto sensu), to have given its consent to the exercise by the Court, in the present case, of a wider jurisdiction than that provided for in Article IX of the Convention. Given the nature of both the provisional measures subsequently requested by Yugoslavia on 9 August 1993 - which were aimed exclusively at the preservation of rights conferred by the Genocide Convention - and the unequivocal declarations whereby Yugoslavia consistently contended during the subsequent proceedings that the Court lacked jurisdiction - whether on the basis of the Genocide Convention or on any other basis - the Court finds that it must confirm the provisional conclusion that it reached on that subject in its Order of 13 September 1993 (I.C.J. Reports 1993, pp. 341-342, para. 34). The Court does not find that the Respondent has given in this case a "voluntary and indisputable" consent (see Corfu Channel, Preliminary Objection, Judgment, 1948, I.C.J. Reports 1947-1948, p. 27) which would confer upon it a jurisdiction exceeding that which it has already acknowledged to have been conferred upon it by Article IX of the Genocide Convention.