Top UN court throws out Qatar blockade case against UAE

The UN’s top court on Thursday rejected a case brought by Qatar accusing the United Arab Emirates of discrimination during a blockade of Doha, which has since been lifted.

Qatar filed the case in 2018, a year after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut transport links over claims the gas-rich nation backed extremists and was too close to Iran.

Doha said the UAE’s actions had breached the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a UN treaty.

But the International Court of Justice said it “upholds the first preliminary objection raised by the UAE” that racial discrimination did not include nationality in this case.

“The court finds that it has no jurisdiction to entertain the application filed by the state of Qatar,” ICJ President Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said in The Hague.

Qatar’s rivals agreed to lift the restrictions at a summit in early January and the UAE reopened its borders to Qatar shortly afterwards.