UN elects five judges to International Court of Justice for nine-year terms starting in February 2027
Dapo Akande, François Alabrune, Mahmoud Daifallah Hmoud, Rena Lee and Phoebe Okowa have been elected to the International Court of Justice, filling five seats on the 15-member world court.
The United Nations has elected five judges to the International Court of Justice for nine-year terms beginning on 6 February 2027, reshaping a third of the world court at a moment when its caseload is at a record high.
The election was held on 3 November at UN headquarters in New York, with the General Assembly and the Security Council voting separately and at the same time. Under the court’s rules, a candidate must win an absolute majority in both bodies to be elected, a requirement that forced several rounds of voting before the fifth and final seat was filled.
The five successful candidates are Dapo Akande of the United Kingdom, François Alabrune of France, Mahmoud Daifallah Hmoud of Jordan, Rena Lee of Singapore and Phoebe Okowa of Kenya. Four of them secured majorities in both bodies in the earlier rounds, while Okowa’s election completed the set after a further ballot in which she won 183 votes in the General Assembly and 13 votes in the 15-member Security Council.
Nine candidates had contested the five seats. Alongside the winners, the field included Charles Chernor Jalloh of Sierra Leone, Jin-Hyun Paik of South Korea, Marcelo Vázquez-Bermúdez of Ecuador and Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza of Peru, several of whom withdrew as the rounds narrowed.
Two of the five winners are returning judges. Hmoud and Okowa were already serving on the court, having been elected previously to fill vacant seats, and their new terms will run until February 2036. The other three are new to the bench, and together the five will fill seats becoming vacant on the expiry of the terms of Ronny Abraham of France, Dalveer Bhandari of India, Leonardo Nemer Caldeira Brant of Brazil, Hmoud and Okowa.
The court, based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. It has 15 judges, each from a different country, who serve nine-year terms, with a third of the membership renewed every three years. It settles disputes between states and gives advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by UN organs.
The timing of the election matters because of the weight of work awaiting the new bench. The court’s president told the General Assembly on 29 October that 24 contentious cases are pending, a record workload that includes South Africa’s case accusing Israel of violating the Genocide Convention over its war in Gaza.
The court has also announced that it will deliver judgment on 19 November in The Gambia’s case accusing Myanmar of genocide against the Rohingya minority, one of the most closely watched rulings on its docket. That judgment will be delivered by the outgoing bench, but the cases that follow it will increasingly fall to the judges elected this week.
For the states involved in pending cases, the election changes the composition of the bench without prejudging any outcome. Judges are elected in their personal capacity, and the court’s practice is that a judge does not sit in a case involving their own country unless the rules require a different arrangement, with ad hoc judges available to balance national representation.
The new judges take office on 6 February 2027, when their nine-year terms formally begin. Until then, the outgoing judges complete their terms, and the court’s work continues under its existing membership, with the November judgment in the Myanmar case among the first tests of how the institution handles the transition.
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