Myanmar Genocide: ICJ to rule on provisional measures Jan 23

Myanmar Genocide: ICJ to rule on provisional measures Jan 23

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ highest court, is scheduled to deliver its decision on the provisional measures requested by Gambia in its genocide case against Myanmar later this month.

The Gambian Ministry of Justice confirmed the matter in a tweet on Monday.

Gambia filed a case on November 11 at ICJ accusing Myanmar of genocide in its campaign against its Rohingya Muslim minority.

Gambia, which filed the case on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), requested the ICJ to urgently order measures “to stop Myanmar’s genocidal conduct immediately”.

Gambia takes Myanmar to top UN court over Rohingya genocide

In its first Genocide Convention case, the ICJ imposed provisional measures against Serbia in 1993 and eventually found that Serbia had violated its duty to prevent and punish genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Myanmar’s military launched a brutal campaign against the Rohingyas in August 2017 in the pretext of a counterinsurgency response.

An estimated 745,000 Rohingyas were forced to flee to Bangladesh since then, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Rohingyas and rights groups accused Myanmar of carrying out an “ethnic cleansing” campaign involving mass rapes, killings and the torching of homes – Myanmar denies the charges.

State-sponsored discrimination against the Rohingyas stretch back decades. Myanmar has denied them citizenship despite having lived in the country for generations and forces many Rohingyas to live in squalid camps in apartheid-like condition.

Bangladesh is currently hosting over 1.1 million Rohingyas.

The head of a UN fact-finding mission on Myanmar warned last month that “there is a serious risk of genocide recurring”.

The mission also said in its final report in September that Myanmar should be held responsible in international legal forums for alleged genocide against the Rohingya.

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