Top UN court to rule November 19 on Rohingya genocide case

The top United Nations court will on November 19 deliver a landmark ruling on whether Myanmar’s crackdown against its mostly Muslim Rohingya minority constituted a genocide, officials said on Tuesday (November 3, 2026).

Judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have for seven years been weighing accusations by The Gambia that Myanmar’s brutal repression of the Rohingya breached the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.

While the ICJ has no means of enforcing its decisions, a ruling that Myanmar committed genocide would heap more international pressure on its military junta and be seen as justice for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya.

Legal experts are closely watching the decision from the ICJ, which rules in disputes between countries, for clues as to how the court might sway in the seminal genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel over its campaign in Gaza.

Myanmar has always denied carrying out a genocide against the Rohingya, arguing its actions targeted a military uprising from insurgents after a series of attacks left a dozen security personnel dead.

The crackdown by the Myanmar army and Buddhist militias forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, bringing with them harrowing accounts of gang rape and mass executions.

More than one million Rohingya still live across the border in Bangladesh, in the world’s largest refugee settlement.

‘Collective conscience’

During hearings on the case in January, Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow told the court the Rohingya had suffered “the most horrific violence and destruction one could imagine”.

“It is not about esoteric issues of international law. It is about real people, real stories and a real group of human beings,” said Mr. Jallow.

“The Rohingya of Myanmar. They have been targeted for destruction,” added the Minister.

The Gambia has brought the case to the ICJ under the terms of the UN Genocide Convention, which allows any state to sound the alarm if it suspects genocide is being committed.

The alleged violations of the convention “are a stain on our collective conscience and it would be irresponsible to pretend that it is not our business,” Mr. Jallow said.

Myanmar retorted at the hearing that the allegations were “unsubstantiated”.

“Emotional language and blurry factual pictures are not a substitute for a rigorous presentation of facts,” said Ko Ko Hlaing, a Minister in the President’s office.

In a previous hearing in 2019, de facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi herself addressed the court, housed in the iconic Peace Palace in The Hague.

The Nobel peace laureate said the case risked reigniting the crisis that led to the Rohingyas’ expulsion and said there was no “genocidal intent” behind the crackdown.

Ms. Suu Kyi, 81, will not be attending the verdict, however. She has been under house arrest in the capital, Naypyidaw, since being unseated in a 2021 military coup.

The ICJ has already made one ruling in this case, ordering Myanmar in 2020 to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts” described by the Genocide Convention.

These acts 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”.

ICJ judges also threw out a challenge to its jurisdiction by Myanmar, ruling that it did have the power to decide on the genocide question.

The ICJ is not the only court looking into possible crimes against the Rohingya.

In 2024, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, also based in The Hague, asked judges for an arrest warrant for Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing over alleged crimes against humanity.

A case is also underway in Argentina, under the principle of universal jurisdiction, the idea that some crimes are so heinous they can be heard in any court.