Kenya's Phoebe Okowa Wins Seat on International Court of Justice in Nine-Year Term

Kenya's Prof Phoebe Okowa has been elected a judge of the International Court of Justice, winning the majority of votes required in the United Nations organs that appoint the bench. The election, decided through simultaneous ballots of the UN General Assembly and the Security Council at UN headquarters in New York, gives the Kenyan jurist a nine-year term on the world's highest court for disputes between states, which sits at the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands.

Under the statute of the court, the 15 judges of the ICJ are chosen by absolute majorities in both the General Assembly and the Security Council, with voting rounds repeated until candidates clear the threshold in each organ. Judges serve staggered nine-year terms, with one-third of the bench renewed every three years, and members elected in a November ballot are customarily seated the following February.

Okowa is a professor of public international law at Queen Mary University of London and one of Kenya's most prominent international lawyers, with a scholarly record centred on state responsibility and the law of nations. Her election places a Kenyan academic on a bench that has historically been dominated by jurists from the permanent members of the Security Council and from Western Europe.

The court she joins was established by the UN Charter in 1945 and began work in 1946 as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. It hears contentious cases between states that have accepted its jurisdiction and issues advisory opinions when requested by UN organs and specialised agencies. Article 9 of its statute requires that the bench as a whole represent the main forms of civilisation and the principal legal systems of the world, a provision that shapes the geographic distribution the General Assembly and Security Council are expected to honour. Its judgments are final and binding on the parties, with no avenue of appeal.

The court's docket has grown heavier and more politically charged in recent years. South Africa brought proceedings against Israel under the Genocide Convention in December 2023, leading the judges to order provisional measures in January 2024. The Gambia has pursued a case against Myanmar over the treatment of the Rohingya, Ukraine has filed multiple cases against Russia, and in July 2025 the court delivered a landmark advisory opinion on states' obligations to combat climate change.

Okowa's election sustains African representation on the bench at a time when states from the Global South have become some of the most active users of the court, treating The Hague as a forum for disputes over borders, maritime zones and treaty obligations that smaller economies could not contest by other means. She will sit alongside Uganda's Julia Sebutinde, first elected in 2012 and re-elected in 2020 to a term running to 2030.

Kenya itself has recent experience before the court as a party, having contested the maritime boundary case brought by Somalia, which ended in a judgment in 2021. Okowa will now help decide comparable disputes from the other side of the bench once she is sworn in and takes her seat under the court's customary February calendar.