BiH has officially submitted an application for revision of a judgment against Serbia. Once when the application for revision of the judgment is accepted, there will be a process in which the final word will be given by the judges of the International Court of Justice, 15 of them.
The judges of this court are appointed by the General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations (UN) from the list of candidates nominated by national groups of the Permanent Court of Arbitration on the nine-year mandate.
The process of electing judges is defined by the Statute of the ICJ, which provides a selection of five judges every three years. If a judge dies in office or removed from the office, special elections are organized in which is elected a replacement judge.
Two or more judges of the ICJ cannot come from one state. In the selection of judges is paid attention to the regional representation, so that there are five places intended for the countries of Western Europe and North America, three for African countries, two for Eastern European countries, three for Asian countries and two for Latin American and Caribbean countries. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council are France, Russia, China, United Kingdom and the United States always have their representative in the ICJ.
Judges can make joint judgments or give separate opinions. Decisions are made by majority vote and in the event of an equality of votes for and against, the final vote belongs to the President.
President and Vice-President are elected by the members of the International Court of Justice by secret ballot every three years. The last selection was held on the 6th of February 2015, when for the President of the Court appointed Judge Ronny Abraham (France), and for Vice President Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf (Somalia).
Other current judges are Hisashi Owada (Japan), Peter Tomka (Slovakia), Mohamed Bennouna (Morocco), Antônio Augusto Cancado Trindade (Brazil), Christopher Greenwood (United Kingdom), Xue Hanqin (China), Joan E. Donoghue (United States) Giorgio Gaja (Italy), Julia Sebutinde (Uganda), Dalveer Bhandari (India), Patrick Lipton Robinson (Jamaica), James Richard Crawford (Australia) and Kirill Gevorgian (Russia).
The current President of the Court Ronny Abraham was a judge of the ICJ in the period of the previous judgment in this case. At the time of the judgment in the case of the lawsuit of BiH against Serbia, the 26th of February 2007, the duty of judges had Abraham, Hisashi Owada, Peter Tomka and Mohamed Bennouna.
(Source: faktor.ba)
