Romania has its first judge at the International Court of Justice

The former Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu was elected judge of the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Sorin Iordan, 10.11.2023, 13:55

The former Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu was elected judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. His appointment was made following a vote held at the UN headquarters in New York, where the current foreign policy advisor of Romanian President Klaus Iohannis outran the Russian Federation’s candidate. Aurescu got 117 votes in the General Assembly, compared to only 77 votes that went to his Russian contender, while in the Security Council he won 9 out of the total 15 votes. Bogdan Aurescu thus becomes the first Romanian to hold such a position.

President Klaus Iohannis hailed the United Nations decision as a victory for Romania and for the primacy of international law. In a post on the X network, formerly Twitter, President Iohannis pointed out that Aurescus election as judge mirrors Romania’s strong commitment to the rule-based international order. The success at the UN is a victory of the Romanian diplomacy, the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, adding that Romania has constantly supported the activity of the International Court of Justice by participating in jurisdictional and consultative procedures and by promoting some initiatives aimed at encouraging states to resort to the jurisdiction of the Court to settle disputes.

The appointment of Bogdan Aurescu at the International Court of Justice and the absence, for the first time in history, of a Russian representative among the elected judges, has also triggered a reaction from Kyiv. The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, said that the UN has begun to clean itself from Russian influence and that the world now sees who destroys international law instead of protecting it.

Bogdan Aurescu is a member of the UN International Law Commission and Co-chair of the Study Group of the International Law on sea-level rise in relation to international law. As of September 2004, he was Romanias Agent before the International Court of Justice, tasked with coordinating the activity of the team that represented Romania in the case against Ukraine for delimiting the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zones of the two countries in the Black Sea. The Court ruling was delivered on February 3, 2009 with Romania winning 9700 km² of continental shelf and exclusive economic zone.

Between 2010 and 2011 Bogdan Aurescu was chief negotiator of the Romanian-American Agreement on missile defense and the Joint Declaration on the Strategic Partnership for the 21st Century between Romania and the US. For the position of judge at the International Court of Justice, Aurescu was nominated by the Netherlands, Italy, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and New Zealand. Established in 1945, based on the UN Charter, the prestigious Court is made up of 15 permanent judges, elected for a 9-year term on criteria meant to ensure the representation of the main forms of civilization and legal systems in the world. (EE)