Julia Sebutinde, who voted with Israel on all counts at ICJ, elected court's vice-president

Julia Sebutinde, the Ugandan judge who was the only member of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to vote against all of that court's provisional measures in South Africa's case against Israel alleging genocide in Gaza, has been elected by her peers to serve as the ICJ's vice-president. She will serve alongside Lebanese Judge Nawaf Salam, who was elected president of the court. They will hold their positions for three years.

Sebutinde, until January a relatively obscure figure on the international scene, rose to prominence when she rejected all nine of the court's 'provisional measures' to respond to the genocide against Palestinians alleged by South Africa. The court did not rule on the merits of the case— that determination is reserved for a later stage in the proceedings— but ruled that South Africa's allegation was at least plausible on its face. 

Though South Africa had requested that the court order Israel to cease all military activity in Gaza, the court did not make this demand, nor did it point to any specific activity by Israel that it considered a violation, or even a plausible violation, of the genocide convention. Rather, the court merely ordered that Israel take all necessary measures to prevent or punish violations of the genocide convention, facilitate the supply of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, preserve evidence of possible acts of genocide to be investigated in the future, and report to the court in a month about its doing so.