UN GATE / SDNY, Nov 3 – Today the General
Assembly and Security Council vote on five seats on the
International Court of Justice, and Inner City Press,
which has been banned from entering the UN by outgoing UN
Secretary General Antonio Guterres, is nevertheless
covering it.
It applied again for accreditation on
July 26, 2026 and has had no substantive response.
A candidate needs 97 votes in the Assembly
and 8 in the Council, and the two bodies vote separately,
with results kept secret until each finishes. In the first
round, four were elected: Dapo Akande (UK), François Alabrune (France),
Mahmoud Hmoud (Jordan) and Rena Lee (Singapore).
So, a second round to
choose one more. PGA Rahman banged his gavel and
demanded silence and respect, while disrespecting the
Press with no answer to substantive written questions.
Same from Latvia and its Sanita Pavļuta-Deslandes.
Remaining, it seems:
Charles Jalloh (Sierra Leone), Phoebe Okowa
(Kenya), Jin-Hyun Paik (Republic of Korea), Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza
(Peru) and Marcelo Vázquez-Bermúdez (Ecuador).
And in the second round, none reached the
required eight votes. Then Sierra Leone dropped out,
throwing it weight behind Kenya. And so, a third round.
Press still banned.
Inner City Press has covered these
elections since at least 2008, when it reported
electioneering by France and by African candidates,
including a French representative saying that if the
African candidates won a majority “it will all have to be
re-voted.†The Somali candidate in that race,
Abdulqawi Yusuf, was elected with 116 votes in the
Assembly. He resigned last year, and the seat was filled
by Okowa, who is now on the ballot to keep it.
Later coverage tallied Iwasawa 161, Nolte
150, Xue 144 and Tomka 141, with Elias of Nigeria at 56
votes, and reported on French trading in the ICC judicial
election in December 2011. In May, it also reported on the
Court’s election of a new Registrar. In an earlier
election, a candidate approached Inner City Press and
demanded that an article be taken down.
Today's field has its own story lines. Rena
Lee is Singapore’s first candidate for the Court. She
presided over the UN conference that concluded the high
seas treaty, and Law Minister Edwin Tong has said she
would be the first woman from Southeast Asia and from a
small state on the bench. Akande, the UK candidate, comes
after the UK lost its seat in 2017, when India beat it,
and the Court has had no UK judge since 2018. The Court
has had no Russian judge since 2024. Dapo Akande has been
reported as Nigerian-born, an interesting wrinkle given
Nigeria’s own failed 2020 bid and Elias’s
withdrawal. The most striking candidacy is Peru’s
Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza, an International Criminal
Court judge. An ICC disciplinary investigation concluded
in November 2024 that she had harassed staff at work, and
she received a three-month salary suspension and a written
reprimand.
The US and Russia also sanctioned her in
2025. Peru’s Foreign Ministry then declined to present her
candidacy, reasoning that sanctions by two permanent
members of the Council would hurt her chances. She is on
the final list anyway, with few nominations, and it is not
clear who nominated her. Votes of permanent members carry
no veto in these elections, but they do count toward the 8
needed in the Council. On lobbying, Kenya has
campaigned openly for Okowa. It launched her candidacy at
its UN Mission in New York on August 26, 2025, and its
Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing’oei lobbied
counterparts in Singapore and Côte d’Ivoire. Kenyan press
said 26 countries endorsed her early on, and noted a
string of Kenyan losses in global contests, from the
African Union Commission chair to the WTO. Africa has two
candidates, Okowa and Jalloh.
One preview put the nomination counts at
Akande 43, Alabrune 40, Lee 33, Okowa 26, Paik 21, Hmoud
15, Jalloh 13, Vázquez-Bermúdez 10 and Ibáñez Carranza 2,
though co-nominations do not guarantee votes in a secret
ballot.
Vote-trading in these elections has always
surfaced in conversations with diplomats in the corridors,
which is the access the ban takes away. Today’s results
will be visible on the UNTV feeds, but the deals behind
them will have to be reconstructed afterward, from
diplomats willing to talk by message or email. The
UN, which Inner City Press considers lawless in how it
treats the press, is again deciding who sits on its
highest court behind closed doors on a ballot nobody sees
- those allowed in do not report what happens. Will the UN
change? Can it? Watch this site.
