Rulling On Gambia’s Rohingya Genocide Case At Icj Slated For November 19

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will on November 19 deliver a landmark ruling on whether Myanmar’s crackdown against its mostly Muslim Rohingya minority constituted genocide.

Judges have spent seven years weighing accusations by The Gambia that Myanmar’s brutal repression breached the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.

The ruling carries no direct enforcement power, but a finding of genocide would heap international pressure on Myanmar’s leader Min Aung Hlaing.

He commanded the military during the crackdown before ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a 2021 coup. This year he was installed as civilian president after deeply restricted elections and is waging a diplomatic campaign for legitimacy — a campaign the ruling could complicate.

The judgment may also deliver justice for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya.

Legal experts are watching closely for clues on how the court may approach the seminal genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel over Gaza.

Myanmar has always denied genocide, arguing its actions targeted a military uprising by insurgents after attacks left a dozen security personnel dead.

The crackdown by the Myanmar army and Buddhist militias forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh, with harrowing accounts of gang rape and mass executions. More than one million Rohingya still live across the border in the world’s largest refugee settlement.

During hearings in January, Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow told the court the Rohingya had suffered “the most horrific violence and destruction one could imagine.”

“It is not about esoteric issues of international law. It is about real people, real stories and a real group of human beings,” Jallow said.

“The Rohingya of Myanmar. They have been targeted for destruction,” he added.

The Gambia brought the case under the Genocide Convention, which allows any state to sound alarm if it suspects genocide.

The alleged violations “are a stain on our collective conscience and it would be irresponsible to pretend that it is not our business,” Jallow said.

Myanmar retorted the allegations were “unsubstantiated.”

“Emotional language and blurry factual pictures are not a substitute for a rigorous presentation of facts,” said Ko Ko Hlaing, a minister in the president’s office.

In 2019, de facto civilian leader Suu Kyi herself addressed the court in The Hague. The Nobel laureate said the case risked reigniting the crisis and that there was no “genocidal behind the crackdown.

Suu Kyi, 81, will not attend the verdict. She is under house arrest in Naypyidaw after being unseated in the 2021 coup.

The ICJ has already ruled once in the case, ordering Myanmar in 2020 to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts” described by the Convention — including “killing members of the group” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”