## Facts

- South West Africa (later Namibia) was administered by South Africa under a League of Nations Class C Mandate issued in 1920.
- Ethiopia and Liberia, former League Members, filed separate applications (later joined) alleging South Africa violated the Mandate, including by:
  - failing to advance the welfare and social progress of the inhabitants;
  - contravening limits on military training and military installations; and
  - attempting to alter the Mandate and rejecting international supervision, with challenged policies including apartheid in the territory.
- The applicants sought declarations that the Mandate remained in force, that South Africa was in breach, and that supervisory functions had passed from the League’s Council to the U.N. General Assembly.
- In 1962, the ICJ rejected South Africa’s preliminary objections and held it had jurisdiction under the Mandate’s compromissory clause.
- On the merits phase, the Court treated standing as a potentially dispositive matter and ultimately resolved the case without determining whether South Africa breached the Mandate.
- The judges were evenly divided (7–7); the President cast the deciding vote for South Africa.

## Issues

1. Whether Ethiopia and Liberia had standing—i.e., a legal right or interest of their own—to maintain claims alleging breaches of the South West Africa Mandate.
2. Whether the existence of jurisdiction under the Mandate’s compromissory clause sufficed to establish an enforceable legal interest on the merits.
3. Whether the Mandate system conferred enforceable rights on individual former League Members, or only collective supervisory powers through the League’s institutional machinery.
4. Whether international law recognized an actio popularis allowing states to litigate alleged Mandate violations absent a specific legal entitlement.

## Decision

- The ICJ dismissed the claims of Ethiopia and Liberia for lack of standing, by the President’s casting vote in a 7–7 split.
- The Court held the applicants had not established any legal right or interest appertaining to them in the subject matter of their claims.
- The Court did not reach or decide the alleged substantive breaches of the Mandate, including challenges to South Africa’s administration and policies in the territory.
- The Court did not definitively resolve, in this judgment, broader questions about the continued force of the Mandate after the League’s dissolution or the transfer of supervisory functions to the United Nations.

## Legal Principles

- Jurisdiction based on a compromissory clause is distinct from standing; capacity to invoke a jurisdictional clause does not, by itself, establish a substantive legal right or interest on the merits.
- For a claim to be admissible, an applicant state must show a legal right or interest of its own in the obligation it seeks to enforce, not merely a general concern in compliance.
- Mandate obligations were treated as operating within an institutional supervisory framework; enforcement was understood as primarily collective and institutional rather than individually enforceable by each former League Member.
- International law was treated as not recognizing a general actio popularis permitting states to litigate alleged violations of community-oriented obligations absent a specific legal entitlement.

## Conclusion

The ICJ terminated the cases at the standing stage, holding that Ethiopia and Liberia, despite the Court’s jurisdiction, lacked a legally cognizable right or interest to enforce the Mandate obligations in contentious proceedings, and therefore dismissed the applications without adjudicating the alleged violations.


South West Africa Cases (Eth. v. S. Afr.; Liber. v. S. Afr.), 1966 I.C.J. Rep. 6 (July 18, 1966)