UN’s top court to hold Myanmar genocide hearings in January

The top UN court announced that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will hold hearings in a significant case that Myanmar is accused of carrying out a genocide against its Rohingya community next month.

Given that this will be the first genocide case the ICJ has heard on its merits in more than a decade, precedents are anticipated to be established that could affect South Africa’s legal case against Israel over the conflict in Gaza.

The Gambia, a predominantly Muslim West African nation that brought the case before the ICJ, will present its arguments in the opening week of hearings on January 12 through January 15.

The Gambia, which is supported by the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, filed the case with the ICJ in 2019 and charged Myanmar with murdering the predominantly Muslim Rohingya ethnic group.

Myanmar, which has denied genocide, can then bring its case before the court on January 16 through January 20.

The ICJ has also given witnesses three days to hear their arguments in an unusual move. The media and the public are not allowed to attend these hearings.

The parties’ hearings will focus on the case’s merits, according to a statement from the ICJ.

The Gambia’s lawsuit was submitted to the UN’s top court in 2019 and accuses Myanmar’s authorities of violating the UN’s genocide convention during a brutal crackdown on the Rohingya by the army and Buddhist militias in 2017.

Witnesses reported murders, rape, and the burning of entire villages, with over 742, 000 Rohingya escaping the bloodshed.

In response, the ICJ, which decides disputes between nations, issued an order for Myanmar to “take all measures within its power” in 2020 to stop a genocide.

The Gambia’s minister of justice Dawda Jallow stated at a special high-level UN General Assembly (UNGA) meeting on the situation of the Rohingya in September this year that he anticipated a ruling from the court “soon after” the public hearings in January.

“We almost six years ago filed our case,” the statement read. We are now getting ready for the oral argument on the merits of this case, which the court has scheduled for mid-January 2026,” Jallow said.

The Gambia will make a case for Myanmar’s role in the Rohingya genocide, adding that it must compensate its victims.

The Women’s Peace Network-Myanmar executive director Wai Wai Nu stated to Al Jazeera in September that the number of nations that have “in actuality very powerful” have intervened in support of The Gambia’s case at the ICJ.

According to Wai Wai Nu, “they could come together and put an end to the ongoing atrocities against the Rohingya in Rakhine State,” adding that the UN Security Council could also intervene without the ICJ’s intervention.

Prior to 2017, only about one million Rohingya people lived in Myanmar, or 55 million people, and their entire communities fled into Bangladesh as the military campaign against ethnic cleansing grew.

More than one million Rohingya reside in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh’s largest refugee camp, and other countries have been pressing for them to intervene and take on the burden of hosting a sizable number of refugees.