{"id":56245,"date":"2025-11-13T09:23:02","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T09:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/kenyan-jurist-okowa-elected-judge-of-int-l-court-of-justice\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T09:19:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T09:19:44","slug":"kenyan-jurist-okowa-elected-judge-of-int-l-court-of-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/kenyan-jurist-okowa-elected-judge-of-int-l-court-of-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenyan jurist Okowa elected judge of Int&#8217;l Court of Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Okowa will serve the remainder of Yusuf&#8217;s term, which runs until Feb. 5, 2027.<\/p>\n<p>She is a Kenyan lawyer and professor of public international law at Queen Mary University of London and has served as a member of the UN International Law Commission since 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Under the ICJ&#8217;s Statute, judges are elected by secret ballot in both the Security Council and the General Assembly.<\/p>\n<p>To be elected, a candidate must obtain an absolute majority in both chambers, which vote concurrently but separately.<\/p>\n<p>There were four candidates for the post. Okowa won after three rounds of voting in the Security Council and four rounds of voting in the General Assembly.<\/p>\n<p>The Hague-based ICJ has 15 judges elected to nine-year terms of office. Judges are eligible for re-election. Should a judge die or resign during his or her term of office, a special election will be held to choose a judge to fill the unexpired part of the term.<\/p>\n<p>The 15 judges must come from 15 different countries. The court as a whole must represent the main forms of civilization and the principal legal systems of the world.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-97588\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/png\/10041f5c6cb044b99bbf732cfa8d8ac2.jpg.png\" alt=\"A conference officer (woman in red) hands out ballots during a Security Council meeting to elect a judge for the International Court of Justice at the UN headquarters in New York, Nov. 12, 2025. Kenyan jurist Phoebe Okowa was elected a judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Wednesday to fill the seat vacated by Somalia&#039;s Abdulqawi Yusuf, who resigned effective Sept. 30.\" \/><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-97587\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/png\/image-5.png\" alt=\"Kenyan jurist Phoebe Okowa was elected a judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Wednesday to fill the seat vacated by Somalia&#039;s Abdulqawi Yusuf, who resigned effective Sept. 30.\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kenyan jurist Phoebe Okowa was elected a judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Wednesday to fill the seat vacated by Somalia&#8217;s Abdulqawi Yusuf, who resigned effective Sept. 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":2000097586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[235],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-56245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-xinhua"],"bylines":[{"id":235,"name":"Xinhua","slug":"xinhua","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":80}],"contributors":[{"id":235,"name":"Xinhua","slug":"xinhua","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":80}],"featured_image":{"id":2000097586,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/image.png","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/png","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/image.png","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/image.png","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/image.png","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/image.png","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/image.png","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000097586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56245"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=56245"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=56245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}