Born in 1953 in Beirut, Nawaf Salam was elected judge to the International Court of Justice in 2017. (Credit: Archive photo)
Born in 1953 into a prominent Beirut political family, Nawaf Salam could have been prime minister, captain of a failing ship and miracle worker. He could have been the man the country was waiting for. Instead, he remained an image. A distant memory, sometimes courted, sometimes criticized, always working on bigger issues.
But life is full of surprises. From The Hague, where he lives and sits as a judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Salam has been taking part in history in a different way for the past few weeks.
In the midst of the Israel-Hamas war, and with the Security Council's hands tied by the repeated vetoes of its members, South Africa reshuffled the deck on Dec. 29 by filing a petition with the UN's highest judicial body.
In The Hague, Pretoria accused Israel of genocide: A mini-earthquake and sudden exposure for the 17 judges of the Peace Palace, usually operating in the shadow of the spotlight.
Like the public hearings on Jan. 11 and 12, watched by millions, today's order was awaited by the world. The court will first have to establish whether or not it has jurisdiction to rule on the case, before issuing possible provisional measures to protect the rights of the parties. For example, it could order Israel to halt its military campaign in Gaza.
The Lebanese judge's remarkable entry into the palace on Nov. 9, 2017 was hailed throughout the local press. “Nawaf Salam brings Lebanon back to the ICJ” headlined An-Nahar, underlining a “remarkable political and diplomatic success.”
His election for a 10-year term, thanks to an absolute majority of votes in the General Assembly (135 votes out of a total of 193), as well as in the UN Security Council (12 votes out of a total of 15), was a sign of broad recognition by his peers in legal matters.
Internationally, the sequence left its mark for an entirely different reason: For the first time since its creation in 1946, the United Kingdom was no longer represented at the Peace Palace. “A humiliation for British diplomatic prestige,” said The Guardian.
Discretion
Since then, Salam has donned the black and white robes of justice. Bound by a strict duty of reserve, the judge does not speak out in public on this or on any other case.
Although he was approached on several occasions as a possible prime minister since 2019, he refuses to cave to the demands of the Lebanese political class, some of which are urging him to take a stand on his intentions.
“We haven't perceived enough seriousness,” said Maronite Leader Samir Geagea in June 2022. “He's a ghost, nobody knows who he is,” said former Kataeb Minister Elie Marouni on Al Jadeed.
Still based in The Hague, Salam would rather be judged on his writings: For any program, he refers to his publications. The latest, Le Liban d'hier à demain (Sindbad/Actes Sud, 2021), goes back to the “deep roots” of the Lebanese crisis. It is a diagnosis that relies on law and history to prescribe “a third republic.” “The tragedy of the Lebanese remains to be that they are prevented citizens in an incomplete state,” he wrote.
Salam left Lebanon, like many others, first to study, then to work. A former academic who studied at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, the Sorbonne and Harvard Law School, Salam belongs to a generation of statesmen whose careers are a long series of to and fro: Between Lebanon and the international stage, but also between theory and practice.
After an early career devoted to research and teaching at the Sorbonne, then Harvard and the American University of Beirut, between the late 1970s and early 2000s, his diplomatic and political years bear the hallmarks of the jurist and lawyer.
As Lebanon's ambassador to the United Nations from 2007 until 2017, he made a name for himself through his dedication to the rule of law: In Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006), which was supposed to guarantee a halt to hostilities in south Lebanon, and in Resolution 1757 (2007), which established the Special Tribunal for Lebanon two years after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
On the Palestinian case too, there sits the academic and the diplomat, but also the judge and the man. All operate with great discretion. But all four converge around an unconditional attachment to the law, denouncing when necessary the betrayal of part of the international community.
“The ink had barely dried on United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 (Dec. 11, 1948, instigating the right of return for Palestinian refugees) when international efforts were already beginning to turn away from its implementation in favor of finding ways to resettle them in the Arab world,” he wrote in 1994, while still a professor at AUB, in the periodical Revue d'études palestiniennes.
This article was originally published in L'Orient-Le Jour.