India’s lawyers will have walked away from The Hague on Thursday celebrating the court’s verdict affirming the key points they made. Indeed, for India, it is a moment of vindication. The International Court of Justice has found its urgency and its concerns valid in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case and the rights invoked for him plausible. Pakistan has unambiguously lost this day in court — it has been told to ensure that Jadhav is not executed till the Court delivers its final verdict. The court also held that, under the Vienna Convention, Pakistan should have given India consular access to Jadhav. The judges made clear their disdain for Pakistan’s contention that the Convention did not apply to alleged spies and terrorists, pointing to the plain language of the treaty. The Court also did not find merit in Pakistan’s case that a 2008 bilateral agreement, which carved out an exception for security prisoners, overruled the Vienna Convention.
There is little doubt that both the law, and justice, are on India’s side. Yet, after the effort put in by the lawyers at The Hague, more hard work lies ahead.
different sentence. The Hague is not an international criminal appeals court; it will not concern itself with the rights and wrongs of the trial. Then, Pakistan’s courts may summarily reject the The Hague’s determination, just as the United States judiciary did with Avena.
In the final analysis, Kulbhushan Jadhav’s fate continues to rest in the hands of the generals who seized him, not judges — a truth about how power functions in the international system. Islamabad’s military-dominated strategic establishment engineered the Jadhav case — which, at worst, involved a bit-actor in the India-Pakistan spy game — as part of a project to dynamite Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s outreach to India. The generals will defy international law should they determine this course of action will best serve their interests, just as China or the United States have done before them in cases involving the South China Sea or Nicaragua; history teaches us it is profoundly unlikely any real consequences will follow. Saving Jadhav’s life will need quiet diplomacy and is a long haul — the verdict from The Hague a vital first step.
