The United Nations’ top court, in a provisional ruling, has found that the blockade measures put in place by the United Arab Emirates as part of its boycott against Qatar are outright racial discrimination based measures.
In June last year, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt combined put a land, air and sea blockade against Qatar and severed ties with it. The dispute is termed as the worst diplomatic one in the Gulf in decades.
Qatar, last month, filed a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by accusing the UAE of violating the very international laws by taking measures to expel all Qataris in thousands and shutting down UAE airspace and seaports to Qatar. Many of those expelled Qataris had family or own property in the country.
The state of Qatar alleged that the boycott violates the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) – which includes discrimination on the basis of nationality – a treaty agreed and signed by both the UAE and Qatar.
But Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt are not part of the signatories of the CERD convention.
The judges at the ICJ, on Monday, ruled that whoever among the Qatari families affected due to the UAE’s measures must be reunited. The measure was imposed by the ICJ a time before it hears in full the whole discrimination case.
They further said that the students who were studying in UAE before the blockade must be given the opportunity to complete their studies or to retain records of their studies to be able to continue their education elsewhere.
“Many Qataris residing in the UAE appeared to have been forced to leave their place of residence without the possibility of return,” the judges’ ruling said.
“There is an imminent risk that the measures adopted by the UAE could lead to irreparable prejudice to the rights invoked by Qatar.”
Lulwa al-Khater, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, hailed the ruling.
“This is only the first step on a long road to defend our rights, but at the same time this sends an early strong signal that there will be no tolerance shown to countries that take arbitrary measures against Qataris,” state news agency QNA quoted her as saying.
Aptly and informally called as the World Court, the ICJ is the United Nation’s venue for getting legal disputes resolved between states around the world.
“What the court has made clear in this ruling is that it does believe that the impact of all of that [infringement of rights] would be long-lasting and could have a psychological impact on people, and the UAE should do something about it,” Neave Barker, reporting from The Hague, said.
“The sheer fact that the UAE, out of the four countries that imposed the blockade upon Qatar, is the only signatory to this convention means that it is duty-bound and legally-bound, to uphold all of the details within that convention,” he added.
Tom Cadman, an international human rights lawyer, described the ICJ ruling as “a breakthrough for Qatar”.
“It’s a very important decision that establishes the illegality of the blockade, and that the UAE’s actions are in breach of an international convention which they signed up to,” he told News Agencies.
“The difficulty is if the UAE refuses to implement a decision of the ICJ … they (Qatar) would be advised to take it to the UN Security Council for failure to implement a decision … which they would be entitled to do – and I think that the diplomatic pressure put on the UAE would be so intense.”
Last year on June 5, 2017, the four Arab countries cut all kind of diplomatic relations with Qatar, accusing it of supporting “extremism and terrorism” and cozying up very much to Iran – a regional rival.
Qatar has time and again denied all allegations.
As per Qatar’s National Human Rights Committee’s claim, the blockade has affected about 13,000 people everywhere.
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