Comments
On December 13, 2013, the International Court of Justice ruled in Construction of a Road in Costa Rica along the San Juan River (Nicaragua v. Costa Rica) and Certain Activities carried out by Nicaragua in the Border Area (Costa Rica v. Nicaragua) that the circumstances, as they now present themselves . . . are not such as to require the exercise of its power . . . to indicate provisional measures.” According to the press release, Nicaragua had requested provisional measures “to protect certain rights which, in its view, are affected by the road construction works being carried out by Costa Rica near the border area between the two countries along the San Juan River.” Though the Court reasoned that the rights Nicaragua asserted appeared plausible (e.g., “rights of territorial sovereignty and integrity”) and some of the requested provisional measures were linked to those rights, the Court ruled that Nicaragua had not demonstrated “any real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice to the rights it invokes.”