The last half-decade has been ( a study in emergency. Mass atrocities, climate harms, maritime flashpoints, and information-age evidence have all crowded the international agenda. Yet, crisis can serve as a catalyst in international law. Nowhere is that catalytic effect clearer than in African States’ and advocates’ pivot towards international adjudication, especially the International Court of Justice (ICJ). From The Gambia’s genocide case against Myanmar to small-state coalitions powering the climate advisory opinions and regional and domestic courts that “thicken” compliance, African practice is showing how crisis doesn’t suspend law; it accelerates it. This piece argues that litigants from Africa and the African diaspora are doing more than “using” courts during emergencies. They are actively shaping doctrine: widening access for small and middle-power States, normalizing evolved provisional-measures practice, re-centering evidence and monitoring, and helping to translate climate risk into hard-law duties. The result is a jurisprudential toolkit forged in crisis but designed to outlast it.
Africa’s ICJ Engagement is Rewriting International Law Playbook
