Carol Nolan (Offaly, Independent)
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44. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to list all territories internationally which the State recognises as being illegally occupied by another state, as a result of United Nations or European Union recognition of same; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40970/25]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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In international law, a territory is considered occupied when it is placed under the authority of a hostile army. The occupation extends only to territory where this authority has been established and can actually be exercised, thereby coming under the effective control of the occupying power. International law applicable to military occupation does not characterise an occupation as either legal or illegal, but addresses the fact of occupation and sets out the legal obligations owed by an occupying power to the population of the occupied territory.

However, in order to be legally permissible, the effective control exercised by an occupying power on that territory must be consistent with other rules of general international law. This has recently been clarified by the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, in its Advisory Opinion on the legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. These rules include rules prohibiting the use or threat of force, including the prohibition of the acquisition of territory by use or threat of force, and the rules concerning the right of peoples to self-determination.

In that Advisory Opinion, the Court determined that, having regard to those rules, the continued presence of Israel, as an occupying power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful. While such determinations are rare, in the past the Court also found that South Africa’s continued presence in Namibia, following the termination of the former’s Mandate for South West Africa by the UN Security Council in 1966, was illegal.

Separately, in 2014 the European Council condemned as illegal the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and made clear that the European Union will not recognise it. In 2022 the European Union also declared the presence of Russian forces in parts of eastern Ukraine as a severe breach of international law.