The United Nations’ top judicial body, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, is set to hear a historic genocide case against Myanmar, accusing the military of atrocities against the Rohingya Muslim minority. This marks the first full genocide case the ICJ has handled in over a decade.
The case was filed in 2019 by Gambia, a West African Muslim-majority nation, alleging that Myanmar’s military carried out systematic killings, sexual violence, and forced displacement against the Rohingya population in Rakhine State. In 2017, at least 730,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh, recounting horrifying accounts of mass killings, arson, and rape. A UN fact-finding mission later described the 2017 military offensive as containing “genocidal acts.”
Myanmar has consistently denied the allegations, claiming the military operations were legitimate counter-terrorism measures in response to attacks by Rohingya militants. During preliminary ICJ hearings in 2019, then-leader Aung San Suu Kyi dismissed Gambia’s accusations as “incomplete and misleading.”
Nicholas Koumjian, head of the UN’s Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, stated that the case could set critical global precedents for defining genocide, proving violations, and determining remedies. Legal experts note that the outcome could influence other pending genocide cases at the ICJ, including one filed by South Africa against Israel.
The upcoming hearings, starting Monday at 10 a.m. local time (9 a.m. GMT), will last three weeks. They are expected to allow Rohingya survivors to present their testimony, although sessions will be closed to the public and media to protect the victims’ privacy.
The proceedings occur amid ongoing political instability in Myanmar. Since 2021, the military has toppled the civilian government, violently suppressed pro-democracy protests, and faced a growing armed rebellion. Current elections in the country have been criticized by the UN, Western governments, and human rights organizations as being neither free nor fair.
