The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague on Thursday (January 23) asked the government of Myanmar to immediately take "all measures within its power" to prevent atrocities against members of the minority Rohingya Muslim community. The ruling of the court is binding on Myanmar, and cannot be appealed. However, no means are available to the court to enforce it. Who took Myanmar to the ICJ? It was the Republic of the Gambia, a tiny country the size of Tripura, which stretches out as a thin strip of territory on either side of the river Gambia before it empties itself into the North Atlantic Ocean on the west coast of Africa. The Gambia, which is predominantly Muslim, went to the ICJ in November 2019, accusing Myanmar of genocide, which is the most serious of all international crimes. The Gambia was backed by the 57-member Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The case, 'Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar)', seeking the "indication of provisional measures", was heard by a panel of United Nations judges at the ICJ for three days from December 10 to December 12, 2019. During the hearings at the Peace Palace at The Hague, where the ICJ is housed, Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi personally led her country’s defence against the charges of carrying out a genocide against the Rohingya. So, is the matter closed now? No, it isn't. But not much is going to happen for a fairly long time - and even ultimately, the matter may not end in the justice that has been claimed on behalf of the Rohingya. Thursday's order is a provisional measure. It is a restraining order, and was expected to be delivered fairly soon after last month's hearings. The hearings dealing with the main, and more serious allegations of genocide by the Myanmar military, have not even started. And cases at the ICJ often drag on for years on end, and no quick closure can be reasonably expected. Also, as commentators quoted by international media reports have argued, the legal bar for handing out a conviction for genocide is very high. So far, only three cases of genocide worldwide have been recognised since World War II: Cambodia (the late 1970s), Rwanda (1994), and Srebrenica, Bosnia (1995). "Proving genocide has been difficult because of the high bar set by its ‘intent requirement’ - that is showing the genocidal acts were carried out with the specific intent to eliminate a people on the basis of their ethnicity," a Reuters report last month quoted Richard Dicker, head of the international justice programme at New York-based Human Rights Watch, as saying. What did the ICJ say on Thursday? The court indicated the following provisional measures: * That Myanmar shall, in accordance with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, "take all measures within its power to prevent the killing of the Rohingya or the causing of serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group"; deliberately inflicting on the Rohingya "conditions of life calculated to bring about (their) physical destruction in whole or in part"; and imposing "measures intended to prevent births within the group". * That Myanmar shall ensure that its military or any irregular armed units within its control, do not commit any of the acts described above, or conspire to commit, direct, attempt to commit, or be complicit in genocide. * That Myanmar shall take "effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts" of genocide. * That Myanmar shall submit a report to the ICJ on all measures taken to give effect to the order within four months, and thereafter every six months, until a final decision is passed. What, in short, is the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar? An estimated 7.3 lakh Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since 2017 when the Myanmar military launched a brutal crackdown on Rohingya villages in the country’s coastal Rakhine state. In August 2019, the UN said the army's action was carried out with "genocidal intent". Myanmar has stoutly denied all allegations of genocide. It has also denied nearly all allegations made by the Rohingya of mass rape, killings and arson against its army. Myanmar says the soldiers carried out legitimate counterterrorism operations. Suu Kyi told the ICJ that no mass killings of Rohingya had taken place. Myanmar also argued that the ICJ has no jurisdiction, and that the case by The Gambia failed to meet full legal requirements.
