NEWS- The Government of Uganda has broken silence and issued a statement taking note of the order made by the International Court of Justice with regard to the case that South Africa made on the suspected acts of genocide in Palestine.
According to the Statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and signed by the Permanent Secretary Ambassador Bagiire Vincent Waisswa, the opinion made by Justice Julia Ssebutinde does not reflect the government of Uganda position.
Ambassador Bagiire, said that the government of Uganda will stand with the position of the recommendation made at the just concluded 19th Non Aligned Movement that took place in Kampala.
He said that one of the recommendations condemned the continued military campaign by Israeli against the defenseless Palestine which has left more than 21,000 people dead.
The Kampala Non Aligned Movement declaration also for an immediate end to Israel military siege and aggression on the Gaza Strip and also allow the flow of humanitarian assistance to the starving Palestinians.
Ambassador Bagiire also said that Uganda does not support the forceful individual or mass transfer of Palestinians from the Palestinian Occupied land to any other country as it has been proposed.
Here below is the full statement issued by the government of Uganda over the matter.
This comes after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take steps to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire where at least 183 people have been killed and 377 wounded throughout the enclave in 24 hours.
Justice Julia Sebutinde wrote in her dissent that the dispute is essentially and historically a political one between Israel and Palestinians and should be resolved through a diplomatic or negotiated settlement and an implementation in good faith of the United Nations Security Council’s resolutions.
On November 15th the Security Council passed a resolution that called for humanitarian pauses to allow aid into Gaza and for the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups.
On December 22nd 2023, the Security Council passed a resolution demanding that all parties involved in the conflict, allow, facilitate and enable the delivery of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.
However, Justice Sebutinde wrote that she doesn’t believe that the Israel-Hamas war, or more widely the dispute between Israel and the Palestinian people, is a legal issue “calling for judicial settlement” by the International Court of Justice.
Sebutinde wrote in her dissent, “Unfortunately, the failure, reluctance or inability of States to resolve political controversies such as this one through effective diplomacy or negotiations may sometimes lead them to resort to a pretextual invocation of treaties like the Genocide Convention, in a desperate bid to force a case into the context of such a treaty, in order to foster its judicial settlement rather like the proverbial Cinderella’s glass slipper”.
The judge added that she didn’t believe South Africa’s provisional measures, as requested under the U.N. genocide law, were plausible because the acts allegedly committed by Israel were not accompanied by a genocidal intent.
WHO IS JULIA SSEBUTINDE?
Sebutinde has been on the International Court of Justice since February 2012 and is currently serving her second term and she is the first African woman to sit on the ICJ bench and before joining the court, she sat on the High Court of Uganda and the Special Court of Sierra Leone.
