The new President of the International Court of Justice will be Judge Peter Tomka of Slovakia. He will be assisted by the newly elected Vice President, Judge Bernardo Sepúlveda-Amor of Mexico. Both positions were appointed on Monday 6th February following consultations in the General Assembly of the United Nations and the UN Security Council.
The new leaders of the ICJ will be based in The Hague in the Netherlands with thirteen current cases to oversee. The World Court, settles legal disputes between States and gives advisory opinions on legal questions that have been referred to it by other authorized UN organs. Current cases range from questions over a hydro-electric dam project being contested by Hungary and Slovakia to an Antarctic whaling dispute between Australia and Japan.
In This Story: Netherlands
The Netherlands, informally Holland, is a country primarily located in Western Europe and partly in the Caribbean, forming the largest constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In Europe, it consists of 12 provinces that border Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, with maritime borders in the North Sea with those countries and the United Kingdom. In the Caribbean, it consists of three special municipalities: the islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba. The country’s official language is Dutch, with West Frisian as a secondary official language in the province of Friesland, and English and Papiamentu as secondary official languages in the Caribbean Netherlands. Dutch Low Saxon and Limburgish are recognised regional languages (spoken in the east and southeast respectively), while Sinte Romani and Yiddish are recognised non-territorial languages.
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization that aims to maintain international peace and security.
At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; with the addition of South Sudan in 2011, membership is now 193, representing almost all of the world’s sovereign states.
