Yesterday, 16 March 2022, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decided by 13 votes to 2 that Russia must stop the war against Ukraine.
This is great news!
This is great news because it is legally binding and may help shore up support for Ukraine. The main issue is that it may be hard to enforce. Who would enforce the ruling? How would that look like? What will the real life consequences be?
I don’t have answers to any of these questions and don’t want to speculate.
After hearing about the ruling, I realised how little I knew about the actual workings of the ICJ. Yes, they are based in The Hague, The Netherlands, and it is the court which decides over the fate of war criminals. What else though?
More importantly: who else?
Thanks to all their contributors, Wikipedia has a long but not exhaustive list of the major intergovernmental organisations of which there are over 25.000 in total!
Why don’t you take a look and start reading up on those that impact you directly?