Compensation in International Public Law: General Remarks on the Practice of the International Court of Justice

The article is dedicated to a comprehensive study of the institution of compensation in public international law, with a focus on the doctrinal understanding of this concept and its practical application as a legal mechanism in inter-state disputes. Compensation is examined as a key form of material reparation for damage caused by both lawful acts of a State and its internationally wrongful acts that violate relevant international obligations. The article highlights the distinction between compensation and other forms of reparation, primarily restitution and satisfaction. Special attention is given to the analysis of the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, which plays a decisive role in shaping the standards for awarding compensation in inter-state disputes. It is demonstrated that, despite the general recognition of compensation as an effective means of redressing violations of rights, the International Court of Justice applies this remedy with caution and selectivity. Since 1945, the Court has awarded compensation in only four cases — Corfu Channel (1949), Ahmadou Sadio Diallo (2012), Certain Activities Carried Out by Nicaragua in the Border Area (2018), and Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (2022). The number of cases in which compensation has been granted remains limited, and the procedure itself requires clear proof of all elements of an internationally wrongful act, i.e. damage, causation, and the violation of a specific rule of international law. The article underscores that the absence of an established breach of concrete international legal obligations prevented the transition to the stage of assessing damage and determining its material expression; such an approach was confirmed, inter alia, in the case Application of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.