The World Court's rulings are final and binding, but it cannot enforce them
Fifteen judges in The Hague decide disputes between nations, and their judgments cannot be appealed. Yet the International Court of Justice has no police, no bailiffs and no army. Making a losing state comply falls to the UN Security Council, where any of five permanent members can block action with a veto.
The ICJ is the United Nations' main judicial body and the only international court that hears general disputes between countries. It also gives advisory opinions when other UN organs or agencies ask for them, and its rulings count as primary sources of international law. Created by the UN Charter in June 1945, it opened for business in April 1946 and heard its first case in 1947. By September 2025 it had handled 201.
Every UN member is automatically a party to the court's statute, but that does not mean every state can be hauled before it. Jurisdiction in contested cases rests on consent, given either through a special agreement for a particular dispute or through a declaration accepting the court's compulsory jurisdiction in advance. The judges are elected by the General Assembly and Security Council for nine-year terms, no two may share a nationality, and the bench must reflect the world's main civilisations and legal systems. Work is conducted in English and French.
It is also the only principal UN organ located outside New York, sitting in the Peace Palace in the Netherlands. That address reflects a longer Dutch story. In 1899 a peace conference initiated by Tsar Nicholas II produced the first multilateral treaties on the conduct of war and a Permanent Court of Arbitration, set up in 1900 and hearing cases from 1902. Its arbitrators were chosen by the disputing parties from a pool.
A second conference in 1907 tried to go further. Britain, Germany and the United States jointly proposed a standing court of full-time judges, but delegates could not agree how to pick them and shelved the plan. The League of Nations finally created a Permanent Court of International Justice in 1920, and the ICJ's statute borrows heavily from that predecessor.
Source: International Court of Justice
