Nicaragua had brought the case to the Hague-based court in early March to ask judges to issue emergency measures to stop Germany from providing Israel with weapons and other assistance.

The International Court of Justice on Tuesday rejected a request by Nicaragua that Germany immediately halt its arms exports to Israel, saying it cannot issue emergency measures against Berlin under the current circumstances.

“The court, by 15 votes to 1, finds that the circumstances as they present themselves to the court are not such as to require the exercise of its power under Article 41 of the statute to indicate provisional measures,” Judge Nawaf Salam, president of the ICJ, said at The Hague in the Netherlands.

The decision, according to the judgment read in the top UN court, is largely based on a significant decrease in recent German arms sales to Israel, the largely defensive nature of arms recently sold, and the extensive internal German government processes to consider if arms would be used to prosecute war crimes or genocide.

Nicaragua brought the case, arguing that Germany had breached the UN genocide convention by sending military hardware to Israel.

The Central American country faced a hurdle in its attempt to persuade the ICJ that German arms sales made it complicit in the alleged genocide of Palestinians due to the decrease in arms sales to Israel since the start of the war in Gaza on 7 October 2023.

Nicaragua claimed Germany approved deliveries of military equipment worth €326.5m (£279.2m) to Israel in 2023, 10 times as much as in 2022, but German lawyers told the court there had been a significant decrease in sales since then, falling to €1m (£855,000) in March 2024.

The Hague-based court also found that only four licences for war weapons had been issued by the German government including two for training ammunition. The court accepted that 3,000 portable anti-tank weapons had been supplied, and the licence for the sale of a submarine is pending. Germany said 98 % of licences granted concerned defensive military equipment, not war weapons.

The judges also rejected that there was a requirement for Germany to continue funding the UN relief works agency as contributions are voluntary, arguing other means existed to provide humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Nicaragua had claimed that in supplying weapons to Israel Germany could not have been unaware that the weapons were being used in the Gaza Strip to commit war crimes.

“Based on the factual information and legal arguments presented by the parties, the court concludes that, as present, the circumstances are not such as to require the exercise of its power … to indicate provisional measures,” Salam said.

However, the 16-judge panel rejected Germany’s demand to strike Nicaragua’s lawsuit from its list, meaning the case will now move on, a legal process that could take years. Tuesday’s ruling was over emergency measures to be implemented swiftly.

The German government has said the lawsuit against it was unjustified. Its foreign ministry wrote on X after Tuesday’s ruling: “No one is above the law. This guides our actions. We welcome today’s decision by the International Court of Justice.”

Israel, which is not a party to the case, strongly denies that its assault on Gaza amounts to acts of genocide and insists it is acting in self-defence.

Germany is a staunch ally of Israel and the second largest supplier of arms to the country after the US.