4 Jul. () –
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has decided on Wednesday that it will allow Germany, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the Maldives to intervene in the complaint filed by Gambia in November 2019 asking the UN’s main judicial body to judge the alleged genocide of the Rohingya population in the Asian country.
The court ruled “unanimously” that the statements of intervention, recorded in November 2023, “are admissible” insofar as they relate to the provisions of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” according to a statement.
The Court has indicated that the seven States concerned “may submit their written observations on the subject matter of their interventions” and the Court “will determine at a later date whether they are authorized to make observations in the course of the oral proceedings.”
Gambia has become the first country to denounce another country with no direct connection to the alleged crimes on the basis of the Genocide Convention. The move, a result of the personal involvement of former Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou after visiting the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and his experience working at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) over the genocide in the African country, has the support of a large number of member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
A UN fact-finding mission set up in 2017 concluded that the Burmese military’s 2017 military campaign, which drove 730,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, had included “genocidal acts”. The government rejected the findings as “biased and erroneous”, saying its crackdown was directed against the rebels who had carried out the attacks. The ICJ, for its part, rejected Burmese authorities’ objections to Gambia’s complaint, declaring itself competent to hear the case, although the date of the trial is not yet known.
Add Comment