The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ highest judicial body for inter-state disputes, is set to deliver a landmark final, non-appealable ruling on November 19 at 10 a.m. local time at The Hague’s Peace Palace, where Court President Judge Yuji Iwasawa will publicly read the verdict on whether Myanmar bears state-level responsibility for committing genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority. This marks a potential first in the court’s 79-year history: a formal finding that a sovereign state has violated the 1948 Genocide Convention through deliberate acts to destroy a protected ethnic group. The case was originally filed in 2019 by the West African nation of The Gambia, with full backing from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, marking the first time a non-directly affected state initiated a genocide proceeding at the ICJ, leveraging the core principle that every signatory to the Genocide Convention holds a shared legal interest in upholding the treaty’s provisions. The dispute stems from the Myanmar military’s 2017 so-called “clearance operations” in Rakhine State, launched in response to small-scale attacks on police outposts by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) that killed 12 security personnel. The campaign triggered the mass exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya across the border to Bangladesh, where roughly 1.2 million now reside in Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee settlement. Extensively documented atrocities during that period included mass extrajudicial killings, systematic sexual violence, and the deliberate burning of entire Rohingya villages. International human rights lawyer Antonia Mulvey, who led UN investigations into sexual violence against the Rohingya in 2017 and now represents Rohingya witnesses in the ICJ proceedings, described the unprecedented scale of brutality: survivors recounted public gang rapes carried out in front of family members, women held for weeks in military detention camps, and explicit threats from soldiers that they would “kill you by raping you.” One eight-month pregnant survivor testified she was hanged from a tree and raped by nine soldiers, resulting in the death of her unborn child. The Gambia’s legal argument centers on four explicit acts defined in the Genocide Convention: mass killing, infliction of severe bodily or mental harm, deliberate imposition of living conditions designed to dismantle the group, and targeted policies to prevent births, pointing to a decades-long pattern of state discrimination that stripped the Rohingya of citizenship via the 1982 Myanmar Citizenship Law, alongside sweeping restrictions on their movement, marriage, healthcare access, and educational opportunities. Myanmar’s state defense, by contrast, argues the 2017 operations were legitimate counterterrorism actions, claims there is no direct documentary evidence of genocidal intent, and rejects the evidentiary weight of the 2018 UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar report that concluded there was sufficient evidence to infer genocidal intent and recommended senior military leaders face prosecution for atrocity crimes. The case has followed years of procedural milestones: in January 2020, the ICJ ordered Myanmar to immediately prevent any further genocidal acts and preserve all related evidence after finding a “real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice” to the Rohingya’s convention-protected rights; in July 2022, the court dismissed Myanmar’s jurisdictional objections; and in January 2026, it held full merits hearings that included closed-door testimony from Rohingya survivors, with 11 third-party states intervening to support The Gambia’s case. Legal experts widely note this will be only the third time the ICJ has ruled on the full merits of a genocide case in its history, following the 2007 ruling that Serbia had failed to prevent the Srebrenica genocide, and the 2015 finding that Croatia did not meet its burden of proof to show Serbia committed genocide against its population. The ruling’s core legal test will address how “genocidal intent” – the requirement to prove a state acted to destroy a protected group in whole or in part – can be inferred from circumstantial evidence, in the absence of explicit written state orders or official policy documents. The Gambia argues the overwhelming scale, consistent pattern, and unprecedented brutality of the 2017 operations, paired with decades of systemic anti-Rohingya discrimination, make genocidal intent the only reasonable possible inference. The ruling’s ripple effects will extend far beyond Myanmar’s borders, as it will set binding precedent for four pending high-profile ICJ genocide cases: Ukraine v Russia, South Africa v Israel over atrocities in Gaza that have killed nearly 75,000 people, Nicaragua v Germany, and Democratic Republic of the Congo v Rwanda. Trinity College Dublin Assistant Professor of International Human Rights Law Mike Becker, a former ICJ associate legal officer, noted the judgment will be the first genocide merits ruling in a case with unprecedented third-state intervention, and will shape the future scope of the ICJ’s role as a global accountability mechanism. While Myanmar is legally obligated to comply with the final ruling, enforcement mechanisms are limited: non-compliance can be referred to the UN Security Council, which has never previously used its authority to enforce an ICJ judgment. Analysts note that full compliance with the ruling, which could include groundbreaking remedies such as mandatory citizenship reforms for the Rohingya, formal reparations, and the return of seized land and property, may become a precondition for the ruling military junta – which seized power in a 2021 coup, ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government, and later installed former long-time military chief Min Aung Hlaing as state president – to regain international legitimacy. Parallel international proceedings are also advancing against Myanmar’s military leadership: the International Criminal Court prosecutor filed a November 2024 request for an arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing over the deportation and persecution of the Rohingya, and an Argentine court issued universal jurisdiction arrest warrants in February 2025 for 25 senior Myanmar officials including Min Aung Hlaing and Aung San Suu Kyi. For Rohingya survivors, the top priority of the ruling is formal, global recognition of the harms inflicted on their community, alongside concrete action to restore their long-denied basic rights.