Key facts
- The ICJ has never found a state responsible for genocide, a crime defined after the Nazi-led Holocaust.
- Gambia accused Myanmar of breaching the 1948 UN genocide convention; ICJ judges have weighed the case for seven years.
- Myanmar has denied carrying out a genocide and says its actions targeted a military uprising from insurgents.
- Yanghee Lee, a former UN rights investigator to Myanmar, said the ruling will be historic for Rohingya survivors.
- Antonia Mulvey of Legal Action Worldwide said she was cautiously optimistic the court would hold Myanmar fully accountable.
- More than 1 million Rohingya remain in Bangladesh, and fewer than 600,000 are estimated to remain in Myanmar.
The International Court of Justice will deliver its judgment on Thursday morning in The Hague on whether Myanmar committed genocide against its Rohingya minority, nearly a decade after a military campaign forced hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya to flee across the border into Bangladesh. The case was brought by Gambia, a Muslim-majority state, which accused Myanmar of breaching the 1948 UN genocide convention. ICJ judges have spent seven years weighing the accusations.
The court has never found a state responsible for genocide, a crime defined after the Nazi-led Holocaust. A key issue in previous cases has been how to prove intent in a crime defined as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Two other ICJ cases dealing with atrocities in the Balkans fell short of finding states directly responsible for genocide, although Serbia was found legally responsible for failing to prevent the genocide at Srebrenica.
Yanghee Lee, a former UN rights investigator to Myanmar, said the ruling will be historic for Rohingya survivors and their families around the world. She said the international community failed to prevent Myanmar military atrocities against the Rohingya nine years ago and must seize the opportunity to secure justice.
Antonia Mulvey, founder of Legal Action Worldwide, a group that represents hundreds of Rohingya survivors, said she was cautiously optimistic the court would hold Myanmar fully accountable. She said government actions showed patterns of conduct that proved clear attempts to destroy the group, describing attacks in which civilians were attacked, villages burned, men and women separated and sexual violence carried out. Mulvey said a key part of the judgment will be how it handles rape and sexual violence as an act of genocide.