New Delhi leverages history, convention

NEW DELHI : India leveraged history, convention and Brexit in a hard-fought battle against the UK to get justice Dalveer Bhandari, elected to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for a second term.

Britain’s Christopher Greenwood late on Monday withdrew his candidature and Bhandari won 183 of the 193 votes in the United Nations general assembly (UNGA) and all 15 in the security council.

India successfully argued that a candidate with almost two-third majority in the general assembly never failed to get elected to the ICJ, multiple sources familiar with the election told HT.

“This argument along with other consideration such as the importance of bilateral ties played a role in the withdrawal of the judge,” an official said. But both sides fought hard. For India, a place in the world court was more than a matter of prestige. It is up against Pakistan in the ICJ, challenging the death sentence awarded by a military court to a former Indian Navy officer, Kulbhushan Jadhav. The next hearing is in December.

For the UK, it was a battle of prestige on many fronts.

This will be the first time in 71 year that the ICJ, established by a UN charter in 1945, will not have a British judge.

Had Greenwood lost, which was looking inevitable, it would have been another loss of face at a time when the UK is battling a perception of erosion in its global clout post-Brexit.

A few days the Brexit vote in June 2016, the UK was defeated in a UNGA vote -- 94 to 15 with 65 abstentions – on a Mauritiusbacked resolution . Twenty-two of the 27 EU member countries abstained, while Cyprus supported the resolution. The UK couldn’t afford another set back .

“For the UK, it was also a tough fight and we had factored it duly...” said an official.

India also drew the attention of the interlocutors to 2014. Though the security council voted for Argentina’s Susana Ruiz Cerutti, Jamaica’s Patrick Lipton Robinson had the majority on in the UNGA. Eventually, Argentina withdrew its candidate.

But the UK wasn’t going down easily. It explored the possibility of what is known as a joint conference, a meeting between three UNGA and three security council members, to elect the judge.

India argued there was no precedence of the UN resorting to a joint conference to pick an ICJ judge, sources said.