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This study seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the advisory role of the International Court of Justice in light of its jurisprudence and overall contribution over a period of more than 55 years. The last comprehensive study of the ICJ's advisory jurisdiction was published in 1973. Since then, there have been 11 more advisory opinions, some covering areas of great contemporary importance such as decolonisation, legal issues arising from the possession and possible use of nuclear weapons and international legal aspects of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. This thesis attempts to update previous work on the subject and also to reexamine the function of the advisory jurisdiction in light of these more recent opinions. The thesis highlights the "organic connection" between UN organs and the Court and the Court's contribution as one of the UN's principal organs to the Organisation. The basic argument of this thesis is that the advisory function should be understood as a two-sided process involving the interplay between UN organs and the ICJ. The request for and the giving of an advisory opinion is a collective coordinated process, involving more than one organ or part of the Organisation. Consequently, each must be mindful of the need for some degree of restraint. The collective commitment to achieving the purposes of the Charter should be the ultimate goal for all organs. The study concludes that the Court's role as a participant in the UN's work is circumscribed by its duty to act judicially. In practice, the Court has succeeded in establishing a balance between its role as a principal organ of the UN and its position as a judicial institution with a duty to administer justice impartially. Lastly, the study emphasises that since the San Francisco Conference the advisory function has proved to be a successful instrument for providing authoritative legal opinions that aid the UN in carrying out its functions. The advisory opinions rendered by the Court and by its predecessor, the PCU, have actually gone beyond the expectations of the founders of these Courts, particularly in terms of their contribution to International Law. Yet, as this thesis suggests, the advisory function can still be improved.

Enforcement of international judicial decisions of the International Court of Justice has suffered serious negligence in public international law. Thus, the first significance of this thesis lies in dearth of the authoritative legal literature on this topic. Bearing in mind the unprecedented increase interest in international dispute settlement which can be explained by the phenomenon of proliferation of international judicial bodies and in the qualitative and quantitative nature· of contentious disputes brought before the ICJ, non-compliance with the judicial decisions of the Court is definitely to increase. This study has explored the problem of non-compliance with and enforcement of the judicial decisions of the ICJ; a problem that now exists beyond any doubt as Chapter 1 of this study exposes. However, enforcement cannot be directly made without some initial and critical scrutiny into the legal foundations of the bindingness and enforceability of these judicial decisions normally the rules of pacta sunt servanda and of res judicata, to which Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted. Similarly, the problem of non-compliance with and enforcement of judicial decisions should not usefully be considered in the abstract. Thus, Chapter 4 elucidates the legal nature and the scope of judicial decisions that are subject to enforcement. Article 94 (2) of the UN. Charter provides no exclusive authority for the Security Council to be the ultimate and sole enforcer of the judicial decisions of the I CJ decisions nor is there a straightforward and independent enforcement means of international obligations especially those derived from international judicial decisions. Hence, this study explores and involves various players and invests various means to establish a network of enforcement mechanisms available to all States regardless of their position in the international community. In so doing, the rest of the thesis is devoted to judicial enforcement and institutional enforcement respectively. Chapter 5 examines judicial enforcement through the ICJ itself, while Chapter 6 examines the role of domestic courts of States in this process. Injured State could also seek institutional enforcement. Chapter 7 examines the role of the United Nations, while Chapters 8 and 9 deal with the role of regional organisations and specialised agencies in this process respectively. Notwithstanding the indispensability of judicial and institutional enforcement, they are not always successful or predictable or independently adequate. They may fail to be effective or incapable of inducing a defaulting State to comply with its international legal obligations under the judgment of the ICl So, proposals have been advanced to mitigate or to contain this problem. These proposals, however, have suffered from a lack of support in law and practice, and thus other alternative recommendations and suggestions are provided in Chapter 10, which presents also the final conclusions of this study.