The UN’s highest court on Friday declined to hear “ethnic cleansing” charges brought by Georgia against Russia, saying it had no jurisdiction in the case concerning South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
“The court, by 10 votes to six, finds that it has no jurisdiction to entertain the application,” International Court of Justice president Hisashi Owada said in handing down judgment in The Hague.
The judges partly upheld an objection by Russia to its jurisdiction to hear the case, saying Georgia should have tried harder to negotiate with its neighbor before seeking the court’s intervention.
“Although certain claims and counter-claims made by the parties concerning ethnic cleansing may evidence the existence of a dispute ... these exchanges did not constitute attempts at negotiations,” the judgment said.
Tbilisi filed an application in August 2008 under the -International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), accusing Russia of ethnic violence against thousands of ethnic Georgians in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The case was brought after a brief war over the two Moscow-backed regions that broke away from Tbilisi’s control in the early 1990s.
Moscow has since recognized the regions as independent states, while Tbilisi and most of the international community insist they are part of Georgian territory.
Tbilisi told the court last year that “some 40,000 ethnic Georgians in the Gali district of Abkhazia have survived two waves of ethnic cleansing,” and were now subjected to Russian “discriminatory measures” to force them to abandon their Georgian citizenship or leave the rebel region.
Russia, in turn, claimed that Georgia had sparked the five-day 2008 war with an “unlawful” assault on South Ossetia and therefore had no legal standing.
The court, which hears disputes between states, ordered both countries in October 2008 to “refrain from any acts of racial discrimination” against ethnic groups in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
“We are disappointed that the court has decided to stop the examination of the dispute due to a procedural technicality,” Georgian Deputy Justice Minister Tina Burjaliani said.
The Georgian government said in a statement that the ruling left the option “that once formal negotiations have been exhausted, it [the court] will have jurisdiction over the case.”
Kirill Gevorgian, the head of the legal department at the Russian foreign ministry, said Moscow welcomed the outcome.
“We have won and it is positive,” he said.
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