International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice handed down its decision in the Colombian-Peruvian asylum case on November 20, 1950. The application had been submitted by Colombia to the Court under article 7 of the Protocol of Friendship and Cooperation between Colombia and Peru, Articles 40 and 36, paragraph 1 of the Statute, and article 32 of the rules of procedure. Colombia submitted two questions for the Court's adjudication: 1) within the limits of the obligations resulting from the Bolivarian Agreement on Extradition of 1911 and the Havana Convention of 1938 in particular, and general American international law, was Colombia competent to qualify unilaterally and definitively the nature of the offense for which diplomatic asylum had been granted, and 2) was Peru, the territorial state, obliged to grant a safe-conduct to Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, the refugee who had been granted asylum in the Colombian embassy in Lima. The pertinent facts of the case were: 1) on October 3, 1948 there had been a military rebellion in Peru which had been put down immediately; 2) on October 4, 1948 the Peruvian government charged the American People's Revolutionary Alliance, a political party of which Haya de la Torre was the leader, with attempted rebellion and stated that its leaders would be brought to justice; 3) on October 27, 1948 there was a coup d'etat in Peru and a subsequent decree which prescribed summary procedure in cases of rebellion; and 4) on January 3, 1949 Haya de la Torre sought and was granted asylum in the Colombian embassy.