The case before the International Court of Justice between Gambia and Burma is entering a new stage. The judges confirmed this Friday their jurisdiction to hear the merits of the case. Banjul accuses the military junta of genocide against the Muslim Rohingya minority.
With our correspondent in The Hague, Stephanie Maupas
Since the beginning of this case brought before this UN High Court in November 2019, the Burmese authorities contest the jurisdiction of the Court. The judges therefore decided and they rejected all of Burma’s arguments by 15 votes to one. Only the Chinese judge Hanqin Xue considered that The Gambia was not entitled to plead this case before the Court.
It considered, as Burma had assured during the pleadings last February, that The Gambia was not suffering from the conflict between the military regime and the Rohingyas. For Burma, the Gambian State would have no interest in this case and the complaint should therefore be dismissed.
False, therefore, answered the judges by majority. States have a common interest that genocide be prevented, suppressed and punished. They further add that a state is not required to prove that the victims of genocide are its own nationals.
The Court will now be able to address the merits of the case: the genocide against the Rohingya community for which the Burmese government would be responsible. The procedure that could take months or even years.
In the meantime, at the beginning of 2020, the Court had ordered the Burmese authorities, and in particular its army, to prevent any act of murder, obstruction to births, or destruction of Rohingya civilians. But the conflict continues and a million refugees are still languishing in camps in neighboring Bangladesh.
► To read also: Burma: the Rohingyas victims of a “genocide”, according to Washington