UN court to begin hearings on Rohingya genocide case today

A landmark case accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against the minority Muslim Rohingya will be heard at the International Court of Justice on Monday (January 12).

The hearings will begin at 10:00am (local time) at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague of Netherlands and will span three weeks.

"The trial in the Rohingya genocide case registered with the International Court of Justice is set to begin," Nicolas Koumjian, head of the UN’s Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, told Reuters.

"The case is likely to set critical precedents for how genocide is defined and how it can be proven, and how violations can be remedied," he added.

It will be the first genocide case the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will hear in full over a decade. The outcome will have repercussions beyond Myanmar, likely affecting South Africa’s genocide case at the ICJ against Israel over the war in Gaza.

The predominantly Muslim West African country of Gambia filed the case at the ICJ - also known as the World Court - in 2019, accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya, a mainly Muslim minority in the remote western Rakhine state.

Myanmar's armed forces launched an offensive in 2017 that forced at least 730,000 Rohingya from their homes and into Bangladesh, where they recounted killings, mass rape and arson.

A UN fact-finding mission concluded the 2017 military offensive had included "genocidal acts".
Myanmar authorities rejected that report, saying its military offensive was a legitimate counter-terrorism campaign in response to attacks by Muslim militants.

In 2019 preliminary hearings in the ICJ case, Myanmar's then leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, rejected Gambia's accusations of genocide as "incomplete and misleading".

The hearings at the ICJ will mark the first time that Rohingya victims of the alleged atrocities will be heard by an international court although those sessions will be closed to the public and the media for sensitivity and privacy reasons.

Myanmar has been in further turmoil since 2021, when the military toppled the elected civilian government and violently suppressed pro-democracy protests, sparking a nationwide armed rebellion.