Abstract

In spite of the fact that the International Court of Justice (hereinafter ‘the Court’ or the ‘ICJ’), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations might not be the first international court to come to mind concerning International Humanitarian Law (IHL) , it is argued in this study that its judgments and advisory opinions serve as a base both for the development of this field of law (IHL), and for the process called “humanization of international law. Grounded on such a point, the purpose of this article is to address the relevant jurisprudence of the ICJ regarding IHL such as -contentious cases and advisory opinions of- Corfu Channel Case , Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua , Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons , Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and to examine these cases for identifying how the Court has approached to the basic general principles of IHL and then to investigate whether it has -through the findings of these cases submitted and the requests of advisory opinions transmitted-, really made any noteworthy and/or original contribution to it. First of all, a general introduction of the subject in the first chapter will be sketched out by focusing specifically on the (positive) influence of the increase in the rhetoric of the notion of “international humanitarian law "(IHL)and stresses the norms governing IHL.The second chapter discusses the relationship between IHL and general international law and the reasons for the ICJ’s distinguishing role and importance for the matter at hand, and the third chapter will be devoted to analyzing the case law. Lastly in the Conclusion part, in the light of all these cases, the contribution of the ICJ to IHL will be assessed.

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