A landmark case accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against minority Muslim 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 UN'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.
Myanmar's armed forces launched an offensive in 2017 that forced at least 730,000 Rohingya from their homes and into neighboring 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.
The hearings start at 10:00 a.m. on Monday and will span three weeks.
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.
The country is currently holding phased elections that have been criticized by the United Nations, some Western countries, and human rights groups as not free or fair.
Belgium recently joined South African genocide case against Israel
In December, Belgium officially joined the South Africa case accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
South Africa initially brought the accusation against Israel before the court over alleged violations of the Genocide Convention in relation to the war in Gaza in December 2023. Israel subsequently rejected the allegation of genocide, calling it “baseless.”
Belgium joined South Africa by submitting a declaration of intervention under Article 63 of the ICJ Statute, which allows states that are parties to the Genocide Convention to intervene in proceedings concerning its interpretation. It is now allowed to take part in the construction and development of the ICJ case.
As a signatory to the 1948 Genocide Convention, Belgium says the court’s interpretation of critical articles, particularly the definition of genocidal intent, could have legal implications for it.
Any interpretation the ICJ provides regarding these treaty provisions will also be legally binding on Belgium.