V
of revision or in another context, the concept of “fact” has never been reduced
to physical evidence or documents”.17
12. The distinction between “evidence” and “fact” is not therefore a matter of
pure semantics since it may have important legal implications for the
admissibility of an Application for Revision grounded in Article 28 (3) of the
Protocol. It is consequently desirable that the Court should, one day, provide the
necessary clarifications on this issue and not limit the opening of a revision
procedure solely to the discovery of “evidence”.
13. In the instant case, the Court made a ruling on the admissibility of the
Application for Revision brought before it (paragraphs 32-52 of the Judgment)
without clearly identifying the three conditions prescribed by the Protocol and
the Rules, namely that the Application must: 1) be based on the discovery of
new evidence, 2) which was not within knowledge of the Court “and/or” of the
party seeking the revision at the time the judgment was delivered, and 3) must
be filed within six months from the time when the evidence discovered came
within the knowledge of the said party.
14. Still more fundamental, the Court did not even indicate that the
aforementioned three conditions, though necessary, are not sufficient grounds
for a revision of its judgments. I would therefore now address the lacuna in the
Protocol and in the Rules which, in my opinion, the Court is supposed to fill
through interpretation.
II – The lacuna of the Protocol and the Rules
15. Evidence discovered after the delivery of a judgment and unknown to the
Court and to the party which invokes the said evidence, and invoked within six
months after it was discovered, cannot indeed be sufficient grounds for a
revision of a judgment. The party which invokes the discovery must not also
demonstrate lack of diligence in the matter; in other words, that party must not
have been negligent or faultily unaware of the new evidence before the delivery
of the judgment, revision of which is being sought. It is also necessary, above
all, that the evidence discovered should be of such nature as would exert
decisive influence on the judgment delivered. These are the two key conditions
set forth under the Statute of the International Court of Justice, the Protocol
establishing the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African
States, the Rules of the European Court of Human Rights and the Protocol
17
Dissenting Opinion of Judge Vojin Dimitrijevich attached to the Judgment on the
Application for Revision of the Judgment of 11 July 1996 in the Case concerning the
Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, p.
54, paragraph 6; see also the dissenting opinion of Judge Vladlen S. Vereshchetin (ibid., p.
40, paragraph 10) and the separate opinion of Judge Ahmed Mahiou (ibid p. 70, paragraph 2).