TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The International Court of Justice is preparing to deliver a landmark ruling on Myanmar’s genocide against the Rohingya, a decision that could influence South Africa’s genocide case against the Israeli regime over Gaza.
The ruling, expected Thursday in The Hague, will mark a critical moment in international law, as the world’s highest court has never directly found a state responsible for genocide, a crime defined in the aftermath of the Nazi-led Holocaust.
Nearly a decade after Myanmar’s military campaign forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to flee across the border into Bangladesh, ICJ judges are preparing to deliver their judgment on accusations that the country violated the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.
The case was brought by The Gambia, a Muslim-majority country, which argues that Myanmar’s systematic repression and military operations against the Rohingya constituted genocide.
The judgment is also being closely watched for its potential implications for Israel, whose military campaign in Gaza has become the subject of a separate genocide case initiated by South Africa at the same court.
Both cases concern allegations of a powerful military targeting an ethnic or national group, with the ICJ now facing the task of determining how evidence of systematic violence, mass killings and the destruction of civilian communities establishes genocidal intent.
The Israeli regime, which has received extensive diplomatic and military backing from Washington, faces mounting international scrutiny over its conduct in Gaza, while the United States has increasingly moved against international institutions seeking to hold its allies accountable.
Against this backdrop, the Myanmar judgment could provide important indications of how the court approaches the legal threshold for establishing genocide and the responsibility of states.
Evidence of systematic violence
A central issue in the Myanmar proceedings has been proving the specific intent required under the Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as acts committed with the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
Antonia Mulvey, founder of Legal Action Worldwide (Law), an organization representing hundreds of Rohingya survivors, said she was “cautiously optimistic” that the court would hold Myanmar fully accountable.
She said patterns of government conduct demonstrated clear attempts to destroy the Rohingya community.
“The attacks on the villages took place the same way,” she said. “They would attack the civilians, burn the villages, separate men and women, conduct sexual violence … and then as they fled, they would continue to kill them.”
Mulvey also highlighted the significance of rape and other forms of sexual violence in establishing genocidal intent, saying her organization had collected testimonies describing soldiers mutilating women’s genitals and biting their faces.
“That’s to mark people, to brand them … it is also to stop reproduction,” she said.
“Yes, we would say sexual violence is a critical part to show their intent to destroy the group,” she added.
“You don’t need to gang-rape people. You don’t need to kill their children in front of them. You don’t need to mutilate them. You don’t need to do it in public. What is the purpose of that? The purpose is to destroy the group.”
In January, the ICJ held closed-door sessions to hear directly from Rohingya survivors who had travelled from refugee camps in Bangladesh.
According to Law, one witness described how her child was taken from her arms, stabbed and thrown into a fire, while another recounted seeing piles of bodies in a mass grave.
During the hearings, Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow stressed that the proceedings concerned the fate of an entire population rather than abstract legal questions.
“This is not about esoteric issues of international law,” Jallow told the court.
“It is about real people, real stories and a real group of human beings,” he said. “The Rohingya of Myanmar. They have been targeted for destruction.”
A history of persecution and military atrocities
The allegations against Myanmar stem from decades of persecution, discrimination and the systematic denial of citizenship to the Rohingya, who have faced increasingly severe restrictions and violence in the country’s western Rakhine state.
The crisis escalated in 2017 after a Rohingya militant group launched guerrilla-style attacks, prompting the Myanmar military to carry out what it described as “clearance operations.”
The military campaign forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee into neighboring Bangladesh.
Refugees who escaped in 2017 told the Guardian about a massacre in the village of Tula Toli, where survivors described systematic shootings of civilians, including children being drowned in a river.
Satellite imagery subsequently showed that the village had been razed, reinforcing accounts of widespread destruction collected by investigators documenting the alleged genocide.
The ICJ has previously considered cases involving mass atrocities in the Balkans, but those proceedings stopped short of finding states directly responsible for genocide.
Serbia, however, was found legally responsible for failing to prevent the genocide at Srebrenica.
A finding against Myanmar would increase international pressure on Min Aung Hlaing, who led the military during the 2016-2017 attacks and later seized power in a 2021 coup that overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
The coup triggered a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people.
Min Aung Hlaing is also under investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over allegations of crimes against humanity.
Unlike the ICJ, which rules on disputes between states, the ICC prosecutes individuals.
The former general was installed as civilian president in April following elections widely condemned as a sham and has sought to rebuild Myanmar’s diplomatic relations.
US opposition to international accountability
The Myanmar proceedings are unfolding amid growing tensions between Washington and international human rights institutions.
The United States has taken an increasingly confrontational approach toward international judicial bodies, including imposing sanctions on the ICC.
Although the Biden administration formally recognized the Rohingya atrocities as genocide, Trump’s UN ambassador, Mike Waltz, warned that the ICJ “must not be allowed” to establish a standard for genocide that could be applied to “allied soldiers.”
The warning has particular significance for Israeli military personnel, given the genocide proceedings against the Israeli regime over its actions in Gaza.
Washington’s position has raised further questions about the extent to which political alliances and military partnerships influence international efforts to enforce accountability for alleged war crimes and genocide.
Supporters of the Myanmar case argue that a genocide ruling should prompt countries to halt arms transfers and supplies of jet fuel that could facilitate further military atrocities.
Although the ICJ lacks its own enforcement mechanism, its judgments carry considerable legal and political weight and could be reinforced through the UN Security Council.
However, divisions among major powers, particularly the United States and China, could prevent meaningful enforcement measures.
Rohingya seek justice and recognition
The consequences of the Myanmar military campaign remain devastating for the Rohingya population.
More than 1 million Rohingya refugees remain in Bangladesh, where they live in the world’s largest refugee settlement, while fewer than 600,000 are estimated to remain inside Myanmar.
Yanghee Lee, a former UN rights investigator on Myanmar, described the upcoming ruling as a historic opportunity for survivors and their families.
“The ICJ 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. It must seize this opportunity to finally secure justice for the Rohingya and begin to reckon with these failings.”
For Rohingya survivors, the ruling represents a long-awaited opportunity to secure recognition of the atrocities committed against their community and establish international responsibility.
A displaced Rohingya living inside Myanmar told the Guardian that he hoped the judgment would “help end decades of persecution and discrimination.”
“We are not asking for sympathy alone,” he said. “We are asking for justice, recognition, equal rights and a future in which our children can live safely and with dignity in their own homeland.”
The ruling will therefore carry significance beyond Myanmar, as its treatment of genocidal intent, systematic violence and state responsibility could help shape the legal framework applied to other cases, including South Africa’s genocide case against the Israeli regime over the genocide in Gaza.
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