She objected to most of the conclusions contained in the Court’s advisory opinion of 22 October 2025 on the legal consequences arising from Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid and its obligations as an occupying power in the Gaza Strip.
The position she adopted did not stem from the principles of international law, which the Court is mandated to uphold and ensure its proper application. Rather, her view was based on religious scripture and mythical narratives that she had already cited in prior decisions, particularly in the Court’s discussions on the provisional measures in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, and in the advisory opinion addressing the legal nature of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.
Even as scenes of death, displacement, hunger, and devastation shook humanity’s moral core, she rejected every provisional measure in the Court’s ruling of 26 January 2024, acting in line with her distorted beliefs.
She argued that the measures unanimously agreed upon by the judges obliging Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, refrain from targeting civilians and hospitals, and take actions to prevent genocide, lacked any grounding in international humanitarian law.
She further claimed that Israel was under no such obligations given the attacks it had faced on 7 October 2023. Likewise, she opposed the three provisional measures affirmed in the Court’s subsequent decision of 24 May 2024, which reaffirmed the previous orders and urged Israel to end its military offensive in Rafah.
In the Court’s advisory opinion of 19 July 2024 on the legal consequences of Israel’s policies and practices in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, Sebutinde described the territory as “disputed” rather than occupied, questioning whether a Palestinian people or a country named Palestine even existed.
She relied on biblical and Talmudic narratives, even incorporating discredited quotations from Zionist sources, in breach of the most basic standards of academic integrity.
This time, after facing widespread criticism, particularly following a speech she delivered on 10 August 2025 at a Ugandan church, in which she declared, “The Lord is counting on me to stand on the side of Israel…”—Sebutinde adopted two starkly contradictory positions in the Court’s latest advisory opinion.
Although she joined her fellow judges in affirming Israel’s obligations to abide by the international law and permit the regular flow of humanitarian aid, she rejected all recommendations demanding that Israel cooperate with UN agencies responsible for the delivery of aid, to allow them to open offices, and respect the legal immunities of their staff.
Her motives were clear; to mislead the general public who may not be aware of her ideological stances into thinking that she, like the rest of the judges, supported the application of international humanitarian law, while at the same time sending a reassuring message to the Israelis that she was still aligned with them.
From her lofty judicial position, she sought, believing herself to be divinely appointed, to distort, obstruct, and strip the Court’s decisions of their meaning and effect.
Most strikingly, Sebutinde reiterated her claim that Israel, in its capacity as an occupying power, possesses sovereign privileges under international law that free it from any duty to collaborate with the United Nations or its agencies.
She claimed that Israel had the right to take measures it deemed necessary for its own protection if such organisations posed a threat to its security, giving an example of Israel’s decision to close UNRWA’s operations and seize its offices in Jerusalem on the pretext that the agency had been infiltrated by Palestinian factions.
Shockingly, she went so far as to argue that such actions not only protected the occupier, but also safeguarded the population under occupation.
This represents more than judicial deviance; it is a complete disconnection from reality. By asserting that occupation serves to protect civilians, she exposes a delusional mindset that denies documented facts and verified UN reports.
The same occupation she describes as protective is the one that kills and demolishes, unleashes settler militias under military protection to murder, loot, burn, assault civilians, and seize land to establish new outposts.
The general agreement both inside and outside the Court is that Israel acts as a rogue state, and that whoever defends or rationalises its crimes is equally rogue.
Yet when such a rouge occupies a judicial position, especially that of the Court’s Vice-President, it undermines the institution’s credibility and tarnishes its reputation.
The Court must therefore act upon the calls of numerous states and organisations demanding an investigation into her conduct under its rules, an investigation that should lead to her dismissal.
The Court cannot risk any further losses of confidence in its authority, already weakened by Israel’s continued disregard of its rulings. Given this, it must not add a new and dangerous element from within; a judge driven by dogmatic zeal, using the Court itself as a platform to defend a state that works tirelessly to dismantle the very principles upon which the Court and rule of the law stand.
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