At the International Court of Justice
In the 2011 International Court of Justice judges election, [16] Sebutinde was one of eight candidates for five vacant judicial seats on the International Court of Justice,having been nominated by the national groups of Croatia,Denmark,and Uganda in the Permanent Court of Arbitration. [17] In the election,a successful candidate needs an absolute majority of votes both in the United Nations General Assembly and in the United Nations Security Council. [18] On the first day of voting,four candidates were elected but the fifth position was not filled. [19] When voting adjourned,Abdul Koroma,the incumbent from Sierra Leone,had received 9 votes out of 15 in the Security Council,with 8 votes needed to elect. Over in the General Assembly,after five rounds of voting,Julia Sebutinde,the contender,had received 97 votes out of 193,with 97 votes needed to elect. [20] [21] When balloting resumed on 13 December 2011,Sebutinde received an absolute majority of votes in both the Security Council and the General Assembly,and thus was declared elected. [22]
She was elected for a second term at the ICJ in March 2021. [13]
Sebutinde was one of the 17 judges ruling on provisional measures in South Africa's genocide case against Israel. She voted against all the provisional measures,and was the only permanent judge to vote against any of the measures. [23] [24] Her dissenting opinion concluded that the dispute in question was essentially political rather than legal,and there was no plausible basis for finding genocidal intent on the part of Israel. [25]
The Ugandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs subsequently released a statement that it supported South Africa's position and that Sebutinde's vote "does not in any way,reflect the position of the Government of the Republic of Uganda". [26] [27]
Plagiarism controversy
She was accused of plagiarizing large parts of her dissenting opinion from pro-Israel sources, [26] [28] as well as plagiarism from Wikipedia and the BBC. According to political scientist,Norman Finkelstein,"at least 32 percent of Sebutinde’s dissent was plagiarised",including from writings from Douglas Feith. [29]
The plagiarism includes multiple sentences that are identical with the column,The Forgotten History of the Term "Palestine",by Douglas Feith,such as "In 135 CE,after stamping out the second Jewish insurrection of the province of Judea or Judah,the Romans renamed that province 'Syria Palaestina' (or Palestinian Syria). The Romans did this as a punishment,to spite the 'Y’hudim' (Jewish population) and to obliterate the link between them and their province (known in Hebrew as Y’hudah).",appearing almost identical to Feith's writing. [28] Furthermore,Sebutinde also wrote "When the distinguished Arab American historian,Professor Philip Hitti,testified against the Partition of Mandatory Palestine before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946,he remarked:'There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’in history;absolutely not.' ",a sentence that is almost identical to a page from the Jewish Virtual Library. [26] [28] Other sources that Sebutinde allegedly plagiarized from include a PragerU video from conservative activist David Brog,the Wikipedia page on the Yom Kippur War,a written statement from the International Association of Jewish Lawyers,a statement from Fiji's submission to the ICJ,and a 2016 paper by Abraham Bell and Eugene Kontorovich, [29] the latter of whom "was gratified to see that the dissenting opinion by Judge Sebutinde at the ICJ made significant use of [their] argument". [30]
Pro-Israel Bias
In August 2025,according to an article in the Daily Monitor she declared at the Watoto Church that "the Lord is counting on me to stand on the side of Israel",shared her "strong conviction that we are in the End Times" prophesied in the Bible,and stated her will "to be on the right side of History". [31] Sebutinde has not contradicted this report so far. [32]
On 25 August 2025,the International Commission of Jurists sent a communication to the president of the International Court of Justice Yuji Iwasawa,and urged him to remove Judge Sebutinde due to her partiality and pro-Israel bias. The International Commission of Jurists requested that the Court "undertake remedial actions consistent with Principles 17-20 of the UN Basic Principles. In the interim,I would request that you act to immediately remove Vice-President Sebutinde from participating further in proceedings in the South Africa v. Israel case." [33]
