Eminent jurist C.G. Weeramantry, who was the first Sri Lankan to be appointed to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, and acclaimed for his dissenting judgment on nuclear weapons, passed away here on Thursday. He was 90.
Justice Weeramantry began his judicial career in the 1950s, and became Sri Lanka’s youngest Supreme Court judge.
He later served as a senior judge there before moving to Australia as the Sir Hayden Stark Professor of Law at Monash University.
In the early 1990s, the World Health Organization (WHO) sought an advisory opinion from the ICJ on the ‘Legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons’.
Staunchly opposing the possession of nuclear weapons, he observed: “My considered opinion is that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is illegal in any circumstances whatsoever. It violates the fundamental principles of international law, and represents the very negation of the humanitarian concerns which underlie the structure of humanitarian law”.
He set up the Colombo-based Weeramantry Centre for International Peace and also served as president of the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms, a non-governmental organisation headquartered in The Hague.
