Germany has asked the International Court of Justice to throw out the case Nicaragua brought against it over German arms exports to Israel, arguing the court should not proceed to the merits of the dispute.

The request came before the ICJ, the United Nations' principal judicial organ in The Hague, which is hearing the jurisdictional phase of the proceedings instituted by Nicaragua. Nicaragua's application rests on the Genocide Convention, and Germany's challenge goes to whether the court can properly entertain the claims at all.

What Germany is asking the court to do

Germany's objection is preliminary in the technical sense that matters most to litigators: it does not address the substance of Nicaragua's allegations but asks the judges to end the case before it reaches the merits. If the court upholds the objection, the proceedings terminate without any findings on German export decisions.

Preliminary objections of this kind are a standard procedural device at the ICJ under Article 79 of the Rules of Court. A state raises them when it contends the court lacks jurisdiction or that the application is inadmissible. The filing suspends the deadline for the memorial on the merits, and the court devotes separate hearings to the objection before deciding, by judgment, whether the case continues.

The practical stakes

For practitioners, the outcome will shape how accessible the ICJ remains as a forum for states seeking to challenge third countries' military export policies through the Genocide Convention's dispute-settlement clause, Article IX. A dismissal on jurisdictional grounds would leave Nicaragua's substantive arguments unheard. If the court overrules the objection, the case would move to written pleadings on the merits, extending a proceeding that has already drawn significant international attention.

The case is distinct from the parallel proceedings South Africa brought against Israel itself. Here, Germany is the respondent, and the conduct at issue is its own decision-making on weapons exports rather than conduct of hostilities.

What happens next

The court will hear argument on the objection and then deliberate. ICJ practice does not bind it to a timetable, and judgments on preliminary objections in recent years have typically followed within several months of the hearings. Whatever the judges decide, their reasoning on jurisdiction will be parsed closely by international lawyers for what it signals about the reach of treaty-based compromissory clauses — the provisions in conventions like the Genocide Convention that give the court jurisdiction over disputes between states parties.

No date for a ruling on the objection was announced at the hearings. A decision to dismiss would end Nicaragua's case at the Hague; a decision to reject it, in whole or in part, would send the dispute to the merits phase.

The ICJ's judgment on the preliminary objection will be final and binding on the parties with respect to the jurisdictional question, in line with Article 36 of the court's Statute. Both Germany and Nicaragua, as UN member states, are subject to the court's compulsory jurisdiction in cases where it has established a basis for jurisdiction.