It goes without saying that a State making such a declaration has the discretionary competence to make or not to make such a declaration, or to make a declaration accompanied with temporal, material and territorial’ reservations. Rwanda’s declaration did not come with any reservation, consequently, at the time of submission Court's competence of the Application, there was no limit to the acceptance with respect to Applications from individuals. of the In this matter, Rwanda even submitted a response to the Application, and this, on 23 January 2015. In its response, Rwanda did not challenge the competence of the Court. Subsequently, and considering the facts of the case, the Court decided to hold a public hearing. Both parties were notified on 4 January 2016 that the Court would hold the said public hearing on 4 March 2016. A few days prior to the public hearing, thatis, on 1 March 2016, Rwanda notified the Court of the withdrawal of the declaration. On the eve of the public hearing, the Legal Counsel of the African Union officially notified the Court? accordingly. In the said notification, Rwanda maintained that the withdrawal of its declaration had the effect of suspending all matters affecting it and pending before the Court. It also requested a hearing on the issue of its withdrawal before the Court, before the Court makes a ruling on the case filed before it. Despite this notification, the Court rightly held the public hearing as previously decided. It heard the Applicant's representative, whereas the respondent State did not appear. At this point, the Court should have taken notice of this failure to appear and continued with the procedure. As noted by the ICJ: "A State which does not appear must accept the consequences of its decisions, the first of which is that the case will continue without its participation."? For its part, the Institute of International Law in its resolution on "non- appearance before the ICJ" indicated in the same vein that: “A State’s non-appearance + Cf. GHARBI (Fakhri): “The status of declarations of acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice’, Les Cahiers du Droit, vol.43, n°2, 2002, p. 213 - 274, Available on : http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/043707ar 2 Strictly speaking, notification of the withdrawal should have been addressed to AU Commission, and this by virtue of the parallelism of the forms, because under Article 34 (7) of the Protocol; “Declarations made under sub-article 6 above shal} be deposited with the Secretary-General, who shall transmit copies thereof to the State Parties”. 3 C1: Case concerning military and paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua, Judgment of 27 June 1986, Rec, 1986, page 24, § 28