On Friday, The Hague-based tribunal confirmed that Brasilia had lodged the declaration at the court’s registry on September 17, invoking Article 63 of the court’s Statute.
In line with the article, “whenever the construction of a convention,” to which members other than the ones that are part of a case, “is in question,” each of these members has the right to intervene.
Accordingly, Brazil argued that it was exercising its right as a party to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, before lodging the intervention.
Explaining its move, the country said the war had violated several articles of the convention.
The decision was first broken by Brazil’s Folha de S. Paulo newspaper and confirmed by Reuters on July 23.
South Africa launched the case in the same year that the regime brought the coastal sliver under the full-on war, charging that the brutal military onslaught violated the Genocide Convention.
Last October, Pretoria filed a detailed submission to tribunal outlining evidence of the genocide.
As of May, at least nine countries had either formally applied or declared their intention to join the genocide case.
In June, Al Jazeera reported that the number had risen to 13.
The convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Recently, the United Nations Human Rights Council-mandated Commission of Inquiry pointed out that the regime’s officials and forces “have had and continue to have” such genocidal intent towards Gaza’s two-million-plus population.
The brutal military assault has claimed the lives of nearly 65,200 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since its onset.
It has been using a combination of incessant aerial and ground attacks and near-total siege of the Palestinian territory towards maximizing suffering and fatalities.
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