Gambiaj.com – (THE HAGUE, Switzerland) – The Gambia on Monday urged judges at the United Nations’ highest court to rule that Myanmar deliberately targeted the minority Muslim Rohingya for destruction, arguing that the community’s lives were turned into a “nightmare” by systematic violence amounting to genocide.
Addressing the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow said the Rohingya were ordinary people whose aspirations for peace and dignity had been brutally denied.
“They have been targeted for destruction,” Jallow told the judges. “Myanmar has denied them their dream; in fact, it turned their lives into a nightmare, subjecting them to the most horrific violence and destruction one could imagine.”
The case, filed by The Gambia in 2019, accuses Myanmar of breaching the Genocide Convention through its treatment of the Rohingya, a mainly Muslim minority from the western Rakhine State. It marks the first genocide case the ICJ is hearing in full in more than a decade, with potential implications beyond Myanmar, including for South Africa’s genocide case against Israel over the war in Gaza.
Myanmar has consistently denied committing genocide, insisting that its military operations were a legitimate response to attacks by Muslim militants. Israel has similarly rejected genocide allegations in the Gaza case, with its lawyers describing South Africa’s application as an abuse of the Genocide Convention.
The Gambian case centres on Myanmar’s 2017 military offensive, which forced at least 730,000 Rohingya to flee into neighbouring Bangladesh. Refugees reported widespread killings, mass rape and the burning of villages. A United Nations fact-finding mission later concluded that the campaign involved “genocidal acts,” a finding Myanmar’s authorities rejected.
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