Landmark Myanmar Rohingya genocide case to open at UNs top court

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A general view of a building of United Nations top court International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands, December 2 2024. REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw

THE HAGUE, Jan 12 - A landmark case accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against minority Muslim Rohingya will open at the United Nations top court on Monday.

It will be the first genocide case the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will hear in full in 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.

Myanmar has denied accusations of genocide.

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, Nicholas Koumjian, head of the U.N.s Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, told Reuters.

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.

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

A U.N. 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