The International Court of Justice is not a human rights court in the contemporary sense of that term. The Statute of the Court provides, in Article 34, that: “Only States may be parties in cases before the Court.” It follows that individuals, corporations, non-governmental organizations, even international governmental organizations, may not be parties to contentious cases before the Court. Moreover, the focus of the large majority of contentious cases between States, and advisory opinions given by the Court in answer to questions of international governmental organizations (the United Nations and its Specialized Agencies) has not been on human rights questions.

Of course, the fact that, since the drafting of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice by a distinguished Advisory Committee of Jurists in 1920, it has provided that only States may be parties to contentious cases in no way signifies that the Statute could not provide otherwise, as indeed the constituent instruments of the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and some other international judicial bodies do. The principle that only States have standing before international tribunals has long since been modified. But that principle continues to govern the World Court and will unless and until its Statute is amended.

In his seminal book on International Law and Human Rights published in 1950, the then professor and later Judge Sir Hersch Lauterpacht proposed to amend Article 34 to provide that:

The Court shall have jurisdiction:

1. (1) in disputes between States;

2. (2) in disputes between States and private and public bodies or private individuals in cases in which States have consented, in advance or by special agreement, to appear as defendants before the Court.