Top UN court dismisses Qatar blockade case against UAE

Qatar’s case against the UAE for breaching a 1965 UN treaty has been rejected by the International Court of Justice.

1 min read

04 February, 2021

Qatar filed the case in 2018. [Getty]

The UN's top court on Thursday rejected a case brought by Qatar against the UAE accusing it of discrimination during its three-year blockade of Doha, which has since been lifted.

Qatar filed the case in 2018, a year after the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut transport links to their Gulf neighbour over unsubstantiated claims that it was backing Islamist groups and was too close to Iran, claims Doha strongly denies.

Doha said the UAE's actions had breached the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a UN treaty.

The International Court of Justice said it "upholds the first preliminary objection raised by the UAE" that racial discrimination did not include nationality in this case.

"The court finds that it has no jurisdiction to entertain the application filed by the state of Qatar," ICJ President Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said in The Hague.

Doha's rivals agreed to lift the restrictions at a summit in early January and the UAE reopened its borders to Qatar shortly afterward.

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