ICJ Campaign Over: New Zealand, Morocco, and Mexico Win

The General Assembly and Security Council has selected five members for the next ICJ term. One of members, Thomas Buergenthal of the United States, is a returning judge. The rest, however, are all newbies. As I discussed before, some countries not effectively guaranteed a seat by the Security Council have launched semi-aggressive efforts to get their members on the Court. In that race among smaller countries, New Zealand, Morocco, and Mexico appears to have won. An excerpt from the official press release follows:

THE HAGUE, 8 November 2005. Yesterday, the General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations proceeded to the election of five Members of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for a term of office of nine years, beginning on 6 February 2006.
Judge Thomas Buergenthal (United States of America) was re-elected as Member of the Court. Messrs. Mohamed Bennouna (Morocco), Kenneth Keith (New Zealand), Bernardo Sepúlveda Amor (Mexico) and Leonid Skotnikov (Russian Federation) were elected Members of the Court with effect from 6 February 2006.

It is worth reminding readers of our blogosphere-exclusive horse race analysis from a previous post here. Mexico took the uncontested Latin American seat. Morocco beat out Niger and Tunisia for the Africa seat. The only tough race was between New Zealand and Spain, and it looks like New Zealand’s aggressive campaigning paid off.