International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. All members of the United Nations are automatically parties to the ICJ.

Function of the International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice has a twofold function:

1. the settlement of disputes between states, not individuals, on the basis of international law.
2. the delivery of advisory opinions on legal questions at the request of specifically authorized international organs.

Members of the ICJ

The Court can only deal with a dispute when the States concerned have recognized its jurisdiction. All UN member states are parties to the ICJ. A state that is not a UN member may, however, also join the Court on conditions determined by the General Assembly. 

For further information on the International Court of Justice, see DagDok: section International Court of Justice.

More on the International Court of Justice

International Court of Justice: Basic Toolkit, a multimedia product that aims to familiarize the general public with the history, role and functioning of the Court by providing basic information and links to practical resource.

• UN Charter in Swedish | in English
• UN System Chart
• Yearbook of the United Nations
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
• Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
• Statue of the International Court of Justice

• United Nations Digital Library offers UN documents and open access publications, UN voting data and speeches, UN maps, Content in 6+ languages. Replaces the traditional online catalogue UNBISnet.
• UN iLibrary UN publications online covering different topics.
• ODS full-text UN documents published from 1993 onward and scanned documents published between 1946 and 1993 in the official languages of the UN.
• Daily list of documents (ODS). Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
• UNBIS Thesaurus a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
• Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
  • a list of all documents
  • a comprehensive subject index
  • an index to speeches
  • a voting chart of resolutions
• United Nations Documents Index (United Nations Digital Library) References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, and the Libraries at UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva.