The power of the International Court of Justice to indicate provisional measures to prevent the aggravation of a dispute

The present article aims at examining, in the light of the Court’s practice, some issues concerning the power of the Court to indicate provisional measures to prevent the aggravation or extension of the dispute. While the existence of a power to indicate non-aggravation measures appears to be well established in the Court’s case-law, the scope of this power has proved to be a more controversial issue. This study argues that, by attaching relevance to the element of aggravation, the Court has been able to indicate measures that are not strictly needed to prevent a risk of irreparable harm but which at any rate contribute to a greater protection of the rights of the parties; at the same time, however, the Court has so far refrained from regarding the risk of aggravation as a circumstance which may justify a less stringent evaluation of the other conditions that normally need to be satisfied for the granting of interim protection under Art. 41.