Abstract

The proceedings initiated before the International Court of Justice by Nicaragua against Germany on the basis of alleged breaches of collective obligations included in the Genocide Convention, in the Geneva Conventions on international humanitarian law, and of (peremptory) norms of custom-ary international law, raise several questions. The present paper deals in particular with the material and temporal scope of application of the obligations to prevent and punish genocidal acts and to ensure respect for the Geneva Conventions, the applicability of the ‘third indispensable party’ rule, and the legal standing of a non (directly)-injured State to institute proceedings for the protection of ‘common interests’ of the international community. The case is extremely interesting, since it might contribute to clarify several procedural and substantive aspects related to those issues, which are for the most part still unclear today.