The International Court of Justice (ICJ) was asked to answer one question: Does workers’ rights to strike count as a protected right under a major international labour treaty from 1948?

Yesterday, it answered: Yes.

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What’s the back story?

The treaty in question is called Convention No. 87. It was adopted by the International Labour Organization (ILO): a UN agency made up of governments, employers, and workers’ groups. Countries that sign up to it promise to protect workers’ rights to form unions and organise.

But here’s the thing: the treaty never actually says that the right to strike is protected too.

This wasn’t an accident. When governments, employers, and workers’ groups wrote the treaty, they couldn’t agree on strikes… so they left it out.

Over time, though, international labour experts started treating the right to strike as an assumed, obvious part of the deal (‘If you can organise, you can strike’). But employers eventually pushed back and said: “Wait… we never agreed to that.”

So they asked the ICJ to settle it.

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What was each side arguing?

Workers’ groups said: The right to strike is so essential to the right to organise that it’s automatically included, even if the treaty doesn’t explicitly say so.

Employers’ groups said: The treaty was deliberately silent on strikes. You can’t just read in obligations that were specifically left out during negotiations. If we’d wanted strikes included, we would have said so.

Why does this matter?

Convention No. 87 is one of the most widely accepted labour treaties in the world. Chances are the country you live in has signed up to respect it.

The ICJ opinion doesn’t create the right to strike from scratch (it’s already in a major human rights treaty). But including it in Convention No. 87 is powerful because of how it gets enforced:

If you're a worker anywhere in the world and your government bans strikes, unions can now file complaints with the ILO citing this opinion… and your government faces real international pressure to back down.

So next time you go out to strike and your boss says you can’t? Check if your country is part of Convention No. 87. If it is, tell them: the ICJ said my right to strike is protected under international law.

(And drop a comment if you need a lawyer 😁)

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Four more countries just showed up to the world’s most watched court case: Namibia, Hungary and Fiji and… the U.S.!

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1. What’s the South Africa v. Israel case?

In December 2023, South Africa sued Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ): the world’s top court for disputes between countries.

It accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

That’s a treaty that 153 countries have formally committed to (including both South Africa and Israel) that outlaws genocide and requires every member to prevent it.

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2. What are “interventions”?

While the Court works through the case, other countries can formally weigh in.

There are two ways to do it, but the relevant one here is Article 63: if a case turns on how to interpret a treaty, any country that is party to that treaty has the right to jump in and declare they want to explain what they think the treaty means.

Crucially, if a state gets to explain, the Court’s interpretation in its judgment will be equally binding on them — so they have real skin in the game.

3. Why are these interventions a big deal?

First, the case has become one of the most closely watched disputes ever heard by the ICJ.

Second, 22 countries so far – including the U.S. – have intervened… which is extraordinary!

Historically, interventions were rare and dry… and with one intervenor per case, at best.

Now they’ve become a way for multiple countries to signal who they support politically, and publicly plant their flag.

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4. What are the 22 countries saying?

The ICJ doesn’t find genocide easily. Across the entire Yugoslav conflict — years of war, hundreds of thousands dead — it found genocide in just one place: Srebrenica. And even that single finding, in Bosnia v. Serbia (2007), came with a sting: the Court refused to hold Serbia responsible for it. In Croatia v. Serbia (2015), it found no genocide at all. Both outcomes were widely criticised.

So what’s at stake with these 22 interventions is essentially: how easy or hard should it be to prove genocide happened in Gaza?

18 are siding with South Africa.

Their arguments broadly push the Court toward a more expansive reading of the Convention — e.g.: assess intent holistically, not act by act; recognise that children’s particular vulnerability lowers the harm threshold; and don’t make this impossibly difficult to prove.

The message, broadly, is: the Convention exists to protect people. Use it.

4 are siding with Israel: the USA, Hungary, Fiji and Paraguay (Paraguay says its neutral, but its legal arguments are pro-Israel)

Their arguments push the opposite way — keep the bar high. E.g.: Genocidal intent must be the only reasonable conclusion from the evidence. Civilian casualties in urban warfare don’t prove genocide. Letting this case succeed risks turning every armed conflict into a genocide claim before the ICJ.

The message, broadly, is: genocide is the gravest crime in international law. Don’t dilute it.

The U.S. goes furthest: calling the allegations simply false, framing them as part of a long-running effort to undermine Israel, and reminding the Court that the U.S. helped write the Convention, so its interpretation should carry weight.

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5. Is it a good thing that they’ve intervened?

Politically, yes. It signals that this is an issue the world is watching, and puts states’ views on the record for history.

Procedurally, it’s more complicated. More interveners means more written submissions, more arguments for the Court to work through, and more time. And while the lawyers argue, Gazans are still dying.

6. What next for the 22 interveners?

They’ve filed their declarations saying they want to intervene. The Court will decide whether to let each one go further.

If admitted, interveners get to file fuller legal arguments later in the process, and may get to speak at the main hearings too — though that’s the Court’s call.

Neither South Africa nor Israel is obliged to engage with any of it... But both have every incentive to lean on the interventions that help them and push back on the ones that don’t.

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7. What next for South Africa and Israel?

The case is now grinding through the full legal process: South Africa filed its main written arguments in October 2024, and Israel filed its counter-arguments on 12 March 2026.

South Africa has the right to reply to Israel (and probably will), and Israel the right to reply to South Africa’s reply (so we should expect that!).

After that, oral hearings will take place.

A final ruling is still years away — 2028 is my guess.

8. Will the ICJ say Israel has committed genocide in Gaza?

Maybe, maybe not.

But worth noting: the Court is simultaneously dealing with another genocide case — whether Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya.

That judgment will likely come first, and the way the Court reasons through it will be a strong signal of how it might approach this one.

(A few of the same countries have intervened in that case too.)

Stay tuned!

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