We will be visiting The Hague on May 23-24, 2019 and wish to attend a hearing/sitting of the World Court.

Have any of you done this or have advice? It sounds rather daunting and unlikely that we would get in...here is the language from the website:

On each day of the hearings, a number of seats are allocated to members of the public on a first-come, first-served basis. No prior admission formalities need to be completed, and it is not possible to reserve a place in advance.

The Information Department strongly advises members of the public to follow the proceedings on the Court’s website.

Individuals who nonetheless wish to attend the hearings are asked to present themselves at the Peace Palace gates, with their identity card or passport, no later than 30 minutes before the start of each hearing.

If this is extremely unlikely, I would probably not spend the night in The Hague, but visit for the day and continue to Amsterdam where we are spending three nights.

Thanks for any advice!

Yikes...I can't seem to get the color-justify stuff out of the text. It looked fine and then when I edit it looks fine...but then re-posts as a jumbled mess. I hope you can get the gist of it! Thanks.

Leslie

Looks straightforward. What's the advice you're looking for?

Are you sure they will be sitting on those days? You have to leave your passport at the door in exchange for a pass and you are not allowed any big bags or electronics.
There are potentially more interesting things to see in Den Haag than a sitting at the Peace Palace - you can't see anything other than the court in sitting and may have to spend several hours in there , or perhaps only a few minutes depending on procedings.
Unless you have a particular interest in a case being heard that day I would give it a miss, however you can visit the visitors centre, and if there is no sitting that day book a guided tour - https://www.vredespaleis.nl/visit/?lang=en

hetismij2 and menachem - thanks for your replies. Just to explain a little more - my husband is very keen on seeing the World Court in session. He's very interested in world affairs. We're not as much interested in a standard tour as in attending a session.

It's clear what you need to do on the day if you want to get in from the website. What I hope to find is a calendar, for example, that would tell me if the court is even in session on the two days in May we'll be in The Hague.

I'd also like to get a feeling of how likely it would be that we would even be allowed in. It sounds like there are only a few seats available for the public.

Thanks to both of you. I've never been to the Netherlands and am going to ask some more general information in a separate post.

Wrong court of justice, I deleted my post.

Here's the calendar for ICJ https://www.icj-cij.org/en/calendar

Awesome, Menachem! Just what we needed, thanks so much. Leslie