Nicaragua files ICJ suit on Germany for ‘facilitating the commission of genocide’ in Gaza

Nicaragua filed a case against Germany at the International Court of Justice, accusing it of violating the Genocide Convention by providing financial and military aid to Israel and defunding the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), the UN’s top court said Friday.

“Germany is facilitating the commission of genocide and, in any case has failed in its obligation to do everything possible to prevent the commission of genocide,” Nicaragua said in its filing, according to the court’s press release. Nicaragua asked the ICJ to issue emergency measures requiring Berlin to cease its military aid to Israel and reverse its decision to cut off funding to UNRWA, arguing that this amounts to Germany’s “participation in the ongoing plausible genocide and serious breaches of international humanitarian law and other peremptory norms of general international law occurring in the Gaza Strip.

” Because Germany is a signatory to the 1948 Genocide Convention, the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, it has “a duty” to “do everything possible to prevent the commission of genocide,” Nicaragua said. But Germany has “failed in its obligation” and is instead “facilitating the commission of genocide” by providing political, financial and military support to Israel, while at the same time defunding UNRWA at a time when there is “a recognized risk of genocide against the Palestinian people, directed first of all against the population of the Gaza Strip.”