Viren Mascarenhas, Brian Jacobi, Claire O’Connell, and Isabel San Martin, Southeast What role can the ICC and ICJ play in bringing justice for the Rohingyas' suffering? Public sitting held on Thursday 12 December 2019, at 4.30 p.m., at the Peace Palace, President Yusuf presiding, in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar) The recent ruling against Myanmar should spark a stronger response from the United States. Instagram In the current case, the Gambians are not seeking to try any individual of Myanmar for genocide but are rather accusing the state of Myanmar, and thus Article VI is inapplicable here. The Gambia is a predominately Muslim country and a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a multilateral organisation which represents most of the Islamic world. Some Western democracies have enacted laws providing for the exercise of universal jurisdiction over genocide (i.e., the right to try genocide without the concerned state having any territorial connection to the offense) and those laws have not been protested by the international community of states, which would connote that it is now established as a rule of customary international law. Whether or not the ICJ will order Myanmar to pay any compensation or arrange the safe repatriation of Rohingyas to Myanmar is uncertain. Why a case about the Rohingya, and not any of the many other ethnic groups suffering from persecution and repression at the hands of other states? In the sitting, Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, president of the court, will read its order on Application of the Convention on … An adverse judgment should also be a disincentive for some (though not all) of the foreign investors who care about their reputation among their global consumers and would not be too keen on hobnobbing with a regime under whose tenure the state is found to be committing genocide. A public sitting will take place at 10.00 am at the Peace Palace in The Hague. Although on factual grounds, the majority of the Judges of the ICJ did not hold Serbia and Bosnia liable for the crime of genocide (except for the massacre of more than 7,000 men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995), it nonetheless recognized that a state could commit the crime of genocide. Myanmar will present its defense the next day 3p.m. Gambia being a party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948 (Genocide Convention), its standing to bring a case against Myanmar … Jurisdiction of the ICJ in the case at hand; 2. In the Belgium v. Senegal case, Belgium brought a case against Senegal for its failure to either prosecute or 3 Money, Tokyo That being said, a ruling by the ICJ would clearly have moral value and should deter Myanmar from continuing with the shameless denials and propaganda that it has been running since the beginning of the latest wave of persecutions in 2016. The damning observations of independent bodies such as the report of the  Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar set up by the United Nations Human Rights Council in September 2019, which found that Myanmar has failed to perform its obligations to prevent, investigate, and punish genocide, should help the Gambians to prove the factual aspects of the case. © 2021 Diplomat Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. How will the February 1, 2021, coup in Myanmar affect the country’s internal security and foreign relations? This means that in theory, each of the 152 states party to the Convention could institute a case against any of the other states accused of committing genocide. While other, more prominent members may have political reasons not to launch an inter-state case against Myanmar, these considerations matter less to the Gambia. Asia, Pacific Is there precedent for a state without a physical connection to the violation to sue another state in the ICJ? The case at the ICJ, which was brought by Gambia on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, is just one of several parallel efforts to hold Myanmar accountable for mass atrocities committed against Rohingya Muslims during army counter-insurgency operations in Northern Rakhine State in 2017. 1. Asia, South Text version. Report, Trans-Pacific Gambia is a country of 2 million people, 7,000 miles from Myanmar. As of now, the ICJ’s Myanmar vs Gambia have been announced to proceed as follows (all timestamps in Myanmar’s GMT +6.30) ; on December 10, Gambia will put forward their case from 3p.m. The only exception is when those states have made a reservation to Article IX of the Convention, which provides for the ICJ’s jurisdiction, although such reservations are controversial. The three-day International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearing from December 10 to 12 – in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar) – ended with decision pending on provisional measures tabled by Gambia and Myanmar rejecting it. However, it did not conclude that it could be proven that these acts had been committed with genocidal intent, as no clear evidence had been presented to the Court that there was a plan to destroy these groups as such. Neither the Gambia nor Myanmar has made one. No laureate has had their Nobel Prize revoked, although Aung San Suu Kyi has lost some of her other awards. In the present case, it is likely that the Court will afford a lot of weight to the Gambia’s allegations as they are supported by multiple UN fact-finding reports and it is therefore likely to accede to its request for provisional measures. 28 January was Data Protection Day, an annual celebration of privacy and data protection... Nobuki Yamamoto, a Japanese contemporary artist, made an eye-catching work of ‘goldfish swimming... Current US and EU secondary liability standards do not address all factors to trigger liability... UM postal address Facebook The Gambia successfully filed a case at the International Court of Justice on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation that accuses Myanmar of a genocide campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority. 6200 MD Maastricht The case should also encourage many other states in the future to punch above their weight and fight for justice by invoking the principles of international law. He joined Maastricht University in 2015. Yes. Chinese VC investment has been excluded from India but is growing in South and Southeast Asia. LinkedIn Suu Kyi’s presence will add to the global attention to this case. From Nepal to India, Thailand to Myanmar, people are taking to the streets – or social media – to demand change. Introduction. Facts:-Rohingya are an ethnic group ( Muslims ) harassed in many different ways. However, there are a few good reasons. Twitter We should not expect too much initiative from the ICJ. New Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene became the first to get his shot, kicking off Mongolia's vaccine campaign. The legacy of her father Aung San, a national hero, rests in part on the perception that if he had not been assassinated, his ability to unify Myanmar would have prevented it from being torn apart by ethnic strife following its independence from the British Empire in 1948. The Gambia does not seem to be the most obvious candidate to initiate this case. The Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v.Myanmar), commonly referred to as the Rohingya genocide case, is a case currently being heard by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Why did the Gambia initiate this case? Gambia’s Attorney General Abubacarr Tambadou, who spent more than a decade prosecuting cases from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, had already expressed a personal commitment to the case. In the two previous cases in which the ICJ was asked to examine allegations of genocide, Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Croatia v. Serbia, almost all allegations of genocide were found unproven except for the genocide in Srebrenica on 11 July 1995. Asia, Southeast His teaching and research interests include public international law, the law of armed conflict, human rights, international criminal law, international dispute settlement, and the politics of international law, especially regional approaches to international law. These procedural hurdles need to be overcome before the Court can proceed to an examination on the merits. United Nations Human Rights Council in September 2019. The two sides initiated a disengagement along the banks of Pangong Lake in Eastern Ladakh. Â. Wim Muller is Assistant Professor of Public International Law. He is a Doctor of Laws of the European University (2013), where he researched the Chinese approach and practice of public international law. The support Bosnia and Herzegovina enjoyed from UN organs played a large role in establishing its credibility. The Court will therefore only make preliminary determinations on its jurisdiction and on the existence of genocidal acts – it will most likely focus less on intent. YouTube, A genocide case on Human Rights Day: the Gambia v Myanmar before the International Court of Justice, Let’s make 2021 the year of true ‘transparency’, a socially responsible behavior for data processing activities, The 'goldfish phone booth' copyright case in Japan, Tort law is needed to regulate intellectual property in e-commerce. If Myanmar does appear before the ICJ to defend the case, it is likely that it would challenge the jurisdiction of the Court. Being buoyed by the absence of any domestic pressure and the tacit support of some economically powerful actors such as China, India, and Russia — all of whom have something to gain from the jockeying for the abundant natural resources of Myanmar — the authorities in Myanmar have been emboldened to persecute Rohingyas with apparent impunity since October 2016. Genocide as a crime is notoriously difficult to prove. How Vietnam's communist party chief earned a surprise third term at this year's National Congress. The impacts of the pandemic on India’s youth threaten to last for years to come, undoing decades of progress on multiple fronts. It is accusing Myanmar of contravening the 1948 Genocide Convention, to which both The Gambia and Myanmar are state parties. Power, Crossroads Summary 2020/1 23 January 2020 Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar) Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), together with Myanmar. Mr. Abubacarr Marie Tambadou, An international investigation of extrajudicial killings in the Philippine drug war remains unlikely, even after a stunning admission by the justice secretary. The hearings this week are on the Gambia’s request for provisional measures, which aims to stop alleged genocidal acts which are still taking place. It is however established case-law of the ICJ that the obligations in the Genocide Convention are of an erga omnes nature, which means that they are of legal interest to the international community as a whole, and all other states individually. China is keeping its vaccination campaign homegrown -- despite some reservations from the public. Defense, China How is that remaking foreign startup ecosystems? On November 11, 2019, The Republic of The Gambia filed suit against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”) for violating the Genocide Convention. Gambia being a party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948 (Genocide Convention), its standing to bring a case against Myanmar (also a party to the Genocide Convention) should be a straightforward issue. Both The Gambia and Myanmar had the opportunity to rebut the others case, and to put forward their final points for the court to take into account. In Bosnia v. Serbia, the Court even proved reluctant to order Serbia to produce crucial evidence in the form of the minutes of Serbia’s Supreme Defence Council, to which the ICTY had access, but Bosnia and Herzegovina did not.