The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will announce on next 19 November whether the authorities of Myanmar are responsible for genocide against the Rohingya community, in the proceedings opened in 2019 following the complaint filed by Gambia in November of that year. At the time, the African country accused the Myanmar Army and other security forces of carrying out "widespread and systematic clearance operations" against this predominantly Muslim minority since 2016.
The United Nations' main judicial body has confirmed this Tuesday the date on which it will make public its decision in the case concerning the "implementation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" of 1948, promoted by the Government of Gambia and in which up to eleven States have participated.
The court has recalled that, as early as January 2020, it ordered Myanmar to adopt "all measures" necessary to prevent the commission of genocide against the Rohingya population, after Gambia requested provisional measures while the merits of the case were being resolved.
The former 'de facto' leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi --for years seen as an emblem of the pro-democracy struggle and the defense of Human Rights-- was the subject of sharp criticism for the brutal crackdown with which the Myanmar Army responded, in August 2017, to a series of attacks by Rohingya militants in Rakhine State.
As a consequence of that offensive, more than 700,000 Rohingyas, a Muslim minority to which Myanmar denies citizenship, fled to neighboring Bangladesh in search of refuge. A United Nations investigative commission concluded a year later that Myanmar's armed forces acted with "genocidal intent" in its response against the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA).
Suu Kyi acknowledged abuses carried out by Myanmar's forces, although she described as "misleading" the genocide accusation formulated by Gambia. Article 94 of the United Nations Charter establishes that all member States are required to comply with ICJ resolutions.