World Court order to Stop Genocide in myanmar
The order was the first time that Myanmar has faced justice over a 2017 military crackdown that sent around 740,000 Rohingya fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh.
Balochistan24 web desk:
The UN’s top court told Myanmar on Thursday to take urgent steps to prevent the alleged genocidegenocide of the Buddhist nation’s minority Rohingya Muslims.
The order was the first time that Myanmar has faced justice over a 2017 military crackdown that sent around 740,000 Rohingya fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague granted a series of emergency steps requested by the mainly Muslim African state of The Gambia under the 1948 Genocide
Presiding judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said Myanmar must “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts” described by the convention.
These included “killing members of the group” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
He added that the “court was of the opinion that the Rohingya in Myanmar remain extremely vulnerable.”
The court ordered Myanmar to report back within four months, and then every six months after that.
The Gambia asked for the measures pending a full case that could take years.
The court — set up after World War II as the UN’s top judicial organ to rule in disputes between nations — had earlier ruled for the first time that it had jurisdiction in the case.
Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi travelled to The Hague in December to personally defend her country against allegations of widespread rape, arson and mass killings.
The ICJ’s orders are binding but it has no power to enforce them. However the “significance… shouldn’t be written off,” said Cecily Rose, assistant professor in international law at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
“The court’s orders and judgments tend to carry relatively great authority or legitimacy. Even though the situation in Myanmar is highly political and fragile, international law still plays a role by informing decision-making among international actors,
The ruling comes days after a Myanmar commission concluded that some soldiers likely committed war crimes against the minority group but that the military was not guilty of genocide.
