On January 31, the Facebook page of the Belarusian state television, ОНТ, published a post, according to which the UN Court refused to declare Russia an aggressor state and also refused Ukraine’s request to declare the so-called occupied Donetsk and Luhansk Republics as terrorist organizations.
A post with similar content in February by individual Facebook users as well (1, 2). The information about the court’s decision, based on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, was actively covered by the Russian media (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
The claim that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rejected the demand to declare Russia as an aggressor state, and the so-called occupied Donetsk and Luhansk as terrorist organizations is manipulative, since the mentioned issues have not been considered by the court within the framework of this lawsuit. In fact, Ukraine’s lawsuit concerned Russia’s violation of two international agreements on the financing of terrorism and racial discrimination.
On January 31, 2024, the decision of the main legal body of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), was published regarding the lawsuit filed by Ukraine in 2017, which related to the violation of two international agreements by Russia. These are the “International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism” (ICSFT) and the “International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination” (CERD). The court’s decision emphasizes that the situation in Ukraine today is very different from what it was at the time of filing the lawsuit, although the court is limited to considering the issue only in relation to the above-mentioned two conventions. The decision also mentions that within the framework of this lawsuit, which was filed in 2017, Ukraine did not ask the court to discuss the issues of aggression and illegal occupation by Russia, and did not ask to discuss the status of the Crimean Peninsula, therefore, the court does not discuss these topics. Therefore, the fact that the International Court of Justice refused to recognize Russia as an aggressor state is a lie.
The claim that the court rejected Ukraine’s request to declare the so-called occupied Donetsk and Luhansk Republics as terrorist organizations is also false. In considering the issue of Russian financing of terrorism, the Court noted that, in this case, it is not necessary to assess whether specific incidents constituted acts of terrorism in order to establish a violation. The court also noted that it did not have enough evidence to characterize any of the groups that Ukraine accused of committing terrorist acts as terrorist groups, however, it did not determine whether the funder had knowledge that the money it provided would be used to commit a terrorist act. Accordingly, the court did not discuss whether the so-called occupied Donetsk and Luhansk territories are terrorist organizations and whether the acts committed by them were terrorist acts, but whether Russia knew that the funds it provided would be used to commit terrorist acts.
Another case in which the court considered the designation of the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk republics as terrorist organizations concerned whether Russia violated the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (ICSFT) by failing to monitor funds transferred from its territory to those republics and to declare them extremist or terrorist. The court concluded that, based on the evidence presented, Russia had no reason to have such suspicions and therefore was not obliged to freeze the accounts or include the republics in the list of terrorist organizations.
Ukraine also claimed Russia violated 6 articles (2, 8, 9, 10, 12, 18) of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (ICSFT). The court found a violation of only one of them, Article 9, and in the case of other articles, it stated that Ukraine failed to present sufficiently detailed and specific evidence. According to the court’s conclusion, Ukraine did not provide sufficient evidence to prove that the Russian authorities had accurate information that the funds transferred from their territory were used to finance terrorist acts and violated the Convention by not freezing the accounts and not holding specific individuals accountable. However, the court also concluded that the information provided by Ukraine to Russia created sufficient grounds for suspicion for Russia to initiate an investigation into alleged terrorist financing. Accordingly, the court established a violation of Article 9 of the Convention, which obliges Russia to conduct a timely and effective investigation and to cooperate with other countries that are members of the Convention in this direction. Because of this, the court ordered Russia to investigate the alleged facts of financing terrorism in Eastern Ukraine.
Notably, when considering the lawsuit, the court was limited by the definition of the ICSFT, which includes only monetary financing of terrorism and does not cover the supply of weapons and equipment, training, or other types of support, accordingly, the court did not discuss the provision of such assistance to the so-called republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
What other issues did the ICJ Discuss?
A Facebook post by Belarusian state television, ОНТ, also states the UN court had rejected a large part of Ukraine’s claim that Russia violated the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in Crimea. This assertion is also found in a statement published by the Russian Foreign Ministry on January 31, which stated that the court did not find any discrimination against the Crimean Tatars and rejected Ukraine’s request for reparations. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the court recognized that Russia’s policy is in line with the requirements of the Convention and that there is no discrimination against Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians on the Crimean Peninsula.
In fact, the Court, while discussing the issue of violation of the Convention, found that Ukraine had presented evidence that there had indeed been an attack on pro-Ukrainian politicians and activists in Crimea, however, within the framework of the Convention, the Court was limited to considering only the issue of racial discrimination and therefore concluded that these cases, insofar as they represented political Targeted removal on the basis of identity and position, and affecting not only Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians, but also persons of Central Asian and Russian origin, did not constitute a violation of the Convention on the Prohibition of Racial Discrimination.
The court also considered sufficient the evidence provided by Ukraine that the measures taken by the law enforcement agencies against the Crimean Tatars are disproportionate, however, in this case, it concluded that this was not done on ethnic, but on political and religious grounds, therefore, it does not fall within the scope of the Convention on Racial Discrimination.
A similar conclusion was drawn by the court when considering the measures taken by Russia against the members of the Mejlis, where, in the opinion of the court, discrimination on political rather than racial grounds is also evident.
The court did not find racial discrimination in forcing residents of Crimea to obtain Russian citizenship because this policy would not only affect Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians, but also all ethnic groups living on the peninsula annexed by Russia. A similar conclusion was drawn regarding restrictions on cultural gatherings and the media, as Russia generally has a strict and restrictive policy on public gatherings and the media, not just for specific ethnic groups.
The decision of the court mentions that the finding of non-violation of the CERD does not mean that any other international agreement has not been violated, although these violations cannot be considered within the scope of this case.
As for teaching the Ukrainian language in schools, the court found that the number of people receiving education in the Ukrainian language has decreased sharply since 2014, and Russia has not been able to provide a convincing explanation for this. As a result, the Court found a violation of Articles 2(1)(a) and 5(e)(v) of the Convention and ordered Russia to ensure the existence of an education system in the Ukrainian language in Crimea.
The statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation says that the court recognized that the Crimeans decided to learn in Russian language based on their free will. In fact, we read in the court’s judgment reads that:
“The explanations put forward by the Russian Federation for the decline are not fully convincing. It is true that, according to the OHCHR, the main reasons for this decrease include a dominant Russian cultural environment and the departure of thousands of pro-Ukrainian Crimean residents to mainland Ukraine. However, even considering that many ethnic Ukrainian families left Crimea after 2014, the Court is not convinced that this, together with the reorientation of the Crimean school system towards Russia, can alone account for a reduction of more than 90 per cent of genuine demand in Crimea for school instruction in the Ukrainian language.”
The court also ruled that by banning the Mejlis and recognizing the so-called occupied Donetsk and Luhansk republics, Russia violated the interim measures imposed by the ICJ in 2017, but Russia was not penalized for this.
The article has been written in the framework of Facebook’s fact-checking program. You can read more about the restrictions that Facebook may impose based on this article via this link. You can find information about appealing or editing our assessment via this link.
Read detailed instructions for editing the article.
Read detailed appeal instructions.
