Gambia, Myanmar to Present Their Arguments Before World Court originally published by Human Rights Watch (The Hague) – International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearings in the Myanmar genocide case highlight the need for justice for the ethnic Rohingya, Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, Global Justice Center, Human Rights Watch, Refugee Women for Peace and Justice, and Women’s Peace Network said today. Hearings on the merits of the case begin on January 12, 2026. In August 2017, Myanmar security forces began a sweeping campaign of massacres, rape, and arson against Rohingya in northern Rakhine State that forced more than 700,000 people to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. In November 2019, Gambia filed a case before the ICJ alleging that Myanmar’s atrocities against the Rohingya constitute genocide and violate the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This is not a criminal case against individuals, but a request for a legal determination of Myanmar’s state responsibility for genocide. “Seeing Gambia’s landmark case against Myanmar finally enter the merits phase delivers renewed hope to Rohingya that our decades-long suffering may finally end,” said Wai Wai Nu, founder and executive director of the Women’s Peace Network. “Amid ongoing violations against the Rohingya, the world must stand firm in the pursuit of justice and a path toward ending impunity in Myanmar and restoring our rights.” In December 2019, the ICJ held hearings on Gambia’s request for provisional measures to protect the Rohingya remaining in Myanmar from genocide, which the court unanimously adopted in January 2020. The court’s provisional measures require Myanmar to prevent all genocidal acts against the Rohingya, to ensure that security forces do not commit acts of genocide, and to take steps to preserve evidence related to the case. Myanmar is legally bound to comply. Human Rights Watch and others have documented ongoing grave abuses against the Rohingya remaining in Myanmar, contravening the court-ordered provisional measures. On February 1, 2021, Myanmar’s military staged a coup, overthrew the democratically elected government, and installed a military junta. Since the coup, armed conflict between Myanmar’s security forces and opposition forces and ethnic armed groups has engulfed much of the country, with security forces committing grave abuses, including airstrikes against civilians in multiple ethnic areas. The Myanmar military has long subjected Rohingya to atrocity crimes, including the ongoing crimes against humanity of apartheid, persecution, and deprivation of liberty. Since late 2023, Rohingya civilians have been caught in the fighting between the junta and ethnic Arakan Army armed group. Both sides have carried out grave abuses, including extrajudicial killings, widespread arson, and unlawful recruitment. “The Myanmar military’s vicious cycles of abuses and impunity need to end,” said Shayna Bauchner, Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This should begin with governments holding the junta to its legal obligation to comply with the ICJ-ordered provisional measures.” In January 2021, Aung San Suu Kyi’s ruling National League for Democracy government filed preliminary objections challenging the ICJ’s jurisdiction and Gambia’s standing to file the case. In February 2022, the ICJ heard Myanmar’s objections from the military junta. In July, the court rejected the objections, allowing the case to proceed on the merits. Establishing that genocide has taken place under the Genocide Convention requires demonstrating that genocidal acts were committed with an intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in whole or in part. During the three-week hearings at the ICJ, the parties are expected to present their arguments and supporting evidence about whether Myanmar violated the Genocide Convention. Eleven countries intervened in the case but will not present orally at the hearings on the merits. While their written submissions remain confidential, their declarations of intervention outline several arguments in support of Gambia’s position, including on the issue of genocidal intent, the scope of the obligation to prevent and punish genocide, and the role of sexual and gender-based violence for a genocide determination. The latter is detailed in a paper being published by the Global Justice Center. “Genocide does not unfold only through mass killing,” said Elise Keppler, executive director of the Global Justice Center. “In Myanmar, targeted sexual and reproductive violence inflicted on Rohingya women and girls was designed to break families, threaten futures, and eliminate the possibility of survival as a group. A gender-competent analysis makes this intent visible – and without it, the case that genocide against the Rohingya occurred is incomplete.” In addition to Gambia’s ICJ case, there are several ongoing efforts to bring individual perpetrators of crimes in Myanmar to justice. In 2019, the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor opened an investigation into alleged grave crimes against the Rohingya. Although Myanmar is not a member of the ICC, the court’s judges have determined that the ICC has jurisdiction over the situation because at least one element of the alleged crimes took place in Bangladesh, an ICC member. In November 2024, the ICC prosecutor requested an arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of Myanmar’s military, alleging his responsibility for the crimes against humanity of deportation and persecution of the Rohingya in 2017. To bring comprehensive accountability, the United Nations Security Council should expand the ICC’s jurisdiction to address the full scope of criminality by referring the situation in Myanmar to the court, the groups said. In November 2019, a group of human rights organizations, including the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, filed a criminal case in Argentina under the principle of universal jurisdiction against Myanmar authorities for crimes committed in Rakhine State. In February 2025, an Argentine court issued arrest warrants for 25 individuals from Myanmar, including Min Aung Hlaing. “To fully address the scale of the crimes against the Rohingya, it is key to seek justice and accountability through different avenues,” said Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK. “This case and the pursuit of justice are not only about accountability for past atrocities, but about preventing future ones.” Gambia’s filing in 2019 was the first time that a country without any direct connection to the alleged crimes used its membership in the Genocide Convention to bring a case before the ICJ. In December 2023, South Africa filed a case with the ICJ alleging that Israel violated the Genocide Convention by committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and by failing to prevent it, including by not holding senior Israeli officials and others accountable for their direct and public incitement to genocide. In January, March, and May 2024, the court issued provisional measures, but Israel has flouted the court’s orders to open the crossings into Gaza and allow sufficient humanitarian aid in. “Myanmar’s case before the ICJ is a beacon of hope for hundreds of thousands of people like myself that our plight for justice will not go unheard,” said Lucky Karim, founder and executive director of Refugee Women for Peace and Justice. “This and other cases before the ICJ are powerful warnings to abusive states across the world that one day, they too may be called to respond for their actions before a court of law.”

The United Nations has completed its investigation into alleged sexual misconduct by International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan, according to the President of the Assembly of States Parties, the Court’s oversight body.  GJC has followed with grave concern developments around the allegations, which illustrate how patriarchy and impunity continue to shape global institutions, even those dedicated to the pursuit of justice. Since the allegations became public, zero-sum narratives have dominated much of the discourse. The Prosecutor and his lawyers have presented the sexual misconduct allegations as an effort to “smear” Khan in order to undermine warrants issued for Israeli officials in the ICC’s Palestine investigation (e.g., here, here, and here). Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Foreign Ministry, and others have claimed that the warrants were aimed at repairing the Prosecutor’s image or distracting attention from the misconduct allegations (e.g., here, here, here, and here). Media coverage has reinforced this framing (e.g., here, here). The pitting of victims of alleged sexual misconduct by the Prosecutor against the pursuit of justice for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Palestine represents a familiar and false juxtaposition in the service of power. The proposed dichotomy mandates a choice between advancing justice for alleged victims of workplace sexual violence and those of international crimes, including extermination, starvation, and persecution, as if one should come at the expense of the other. Meanwhile, the underlying alleged crimes are sidelined, deflected, and obscured. The result is a struggle between two powerful sides to control the narrative, while the voices of victims are silenced and the powerful are comforted. As a feminist human rights organization, GJC rejects this outcome, and instead calls for challenging patriarchy and power in a way that advances emancipation from all forms of oppression. GJC recognizes that the ICC, like all institutions of power within the global order, was created, and continues to work within, complex intersecting structures of oppression, including patriarchy, racism, and colonialism. Machinations to frustrate or deflect accountability efforts are not simply symptoms of patriarchy, but constitutive of it.  Irrespective of the outcome of the UN investigation into the alleged sexual misconduct, justice should mean dismantling the systemic roots of domination – not negotiating between them. This crisis should be a call to action for unearthing and rooting out patriarchal dynamics on which international justice was constructed and continues to operate. Otherwise, our shared humanity will continue to suffer.

The United States is trying to evade accountability for grave, ongoing human rights violations in the country, rights groups said today. On August 27, the U.S. State Department sent a letter to the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights stating that the Trump Administration will not participate in its upcoming Universal Periodic Review, a mandatory UN process through which countries review each other’s human rights records. A delegation of local, national and international sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice organizations, as well as other social justice groups, are currently in Geneva, Switzerland for advocacy and evidence briefings in anticipation of the U.S. review, which was scheduled to take place this November.  The delegation in Geneva includes: Jane’s Due Process, The Holy H.O.E. Institute, Reproductive Justice Action Collective (ReJAC), Birthmark, Global Justice Center, Ipas, Guttmacher Institute, Pregnancy Justice, Louisiana Abortion Fund (LAAF), and Physicians for Human Rights. The Universal Periodic Review offers a unique opportunity to hold countries accountable for human rights obligations on a global stage. Every UN member country participates and to date, only two other countries, Israel and Nicaragua, have attempted to evade review. This was scheduled to be the first UN review of the U.S. since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped federal constitutional protections for abortion. Since then, attacks on reproductive freedom and human rights have only escalated. Pregnant people are facing criminalization based on their pregnancy status or pregnancy outcomes, making people fear seeking care as clinicians are deputized to report these patients and driving up adverse maternal health outcomes, defying medical and human rights standards. Abortion restrictions also intersect with attacks on LGBTQIA+ people’s access to education and healthcare. The same lawmakers who obstruct access to reproductive healthcare are prohibiting young people’s access to gender-affirming care. The devastating health and human rights impact of retrogressive laws and policies around healthcare is compounded for multiply-marginalized individuals — as US states become increasingly carceral and militarized, thousands of people are unable to access healthcare, education and employment to sustain their families through restrictions on movement. Communities in the U.S., especially Black, Brown, immigrant, and young people, are already traveling thousands of miles just to access basic healthcare. But our movements are not silent. We came to the UN to deliver the recommendations our government refuses to face, because people’s lives cannot wait. This refusal is one more step in this administration’s intent to undermine human rights structures and silence those who are fighting to protect them — and that is the danger: a government that silences accountability while expanding repression. That is why we are here. Quotes from Delegation: Irma Garcia, Director of Reproductive Health and Education Services at Jane’s Due Process: “We came to the UN to confront our government, because people’s lives are literally on the line right now. The U.S. refusal to participate is about silencing the truth of communities who are dying under these policies. Black people, queer people, immigrants, young people are the ones who carry the weight of these policies. In Texas alone, we’ve served minors who’ve traveled more than 246,000 miles — equivalent to ten times around the Earth — to reach basic healthcare. No young person, anywhere in the world, should face this. We will not be quiet. This is how empire behaves when it is exposed, but we insist on another future rooted in reproductive justice, freedom, and collective liberation.” Qiana Lewis-Arnold of the Holy HOE Institute: “We are the very communities most harmed by U.S. repression. We live the same oppression and risks we are calling out. By bringing our truth to the world stage we put ourselves at greater risk, but we refuse to be silent. We came to Geneva because people’s lives cannot wait, and we want the world to know we are here and that we will be home soon.”  Dr. Victoria Williams, Birthmark: “Louisiana already has one of the deadliest maternal health crises in the country. Our communities, especially for communities of concerned families, are forced into parenthood, pushed deeper into poverty, and criminalized for their pregnancies. By refusing to participate in this review, the U.S. is not only denying its failures, it is denying us the right to live with dignity. We came to Geneva because the lives of our clients cannot wait.” Elise Keppler, Executive Director, Global Justice Center: “The US is repeatedly violating people’s human rights through abortion bans and restrictions, while shying away from a global review in which all countries participate. The US should face up to its status as a regressive global outlier on reproductive healthcare.” Kulsoom Ijaz, Senior Policy Counsel, Pregnancy Justice: “In the first year after losing Roe, we documented at least 210 cases of pregnancy-related prosecutions in the U.S., including after giving birth and suffering a pregnancy loss. At Pregnancy Justice, we defend pregnant people — many of them poor, stigmatized, and ostracized. As the walls continue to close in on them and their rights are trampled, the U.S. has cruelly shut its eyes, plugged its ears, and turned its back to this pain on the world stage on the eve of mine and other civil society members’ presentations on U.S. human rights violations. The Council must hold members accountable, and the U.S. is no exception.” Bethany Van Kampen Saravia, Senior Legal and Policy Advisor, Ipas US: “We traveled to the United Nations to shed a light on the egregious human rights violations occurring throughout the US and to sound the alarms that this administration is testing the rule of law as we know it in the US. If the US does not engage in this UPR process, it opens the floodgates for more human rights violations within its borders.” Pearl Ricks, Executive Director, Reproductive Justice Action Collective (ReJAC): “This is an attempt for the current US administration to shirk its responsibilities to its citizens and to its global counterparts. If the US does not participate in the UPR, our country will be cut off from a universal accountability body. This can’t be the start of a troubling trend or pattern. I adamantly urge UN member bodies and states to apply steadfast and earnest pressure. If the US doesn’t have a UPR in November, who knows what will happen behind its closed doors and taut borders, and the effects it will have on global justice.” For more details, see: Coalition UPR Submission: https://www.globaljusticecenter.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/USA-UPR-Submission.pdf