The long-awaited judgment in The Gambia’s case against Myanmar under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is now scheduled to be delivered on November 19. The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) announcement of the date has rekindled hopes of justice among the Rohingyas, one of the world’s most persecuted ethnic communities. Bangladesh continues to host more than a million Rohingya refugees, having provided them with shelter for long.
The ICJ judgment comes at a time when the Rohingyas are increasingly losing hope, as the world appears to have forgotten their plight and is seemingly preparing to move on. Recent developments in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond concerning Myanmar suggest a significant shift towards normalising relations with the country’s long-isolated military leadership. The junta stands accused of grave human rights violations against its own people, including mass killings, the overthrow of an elected government, and the imprisonment of thousands of political activists.
Even before the February 2021 military coup, Myanmar’s military, with the complicity of its civilian government led by now-imprisoned leader Aung San Suu Kyi, had carried out systematic persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslim minority. These atrocities forced nearly a million Rohingyas to flee to Bangladesh and neighbouring countries. The United Nations has repeatedly condemned Myanmar’s military leadership through various resolutions, while the United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions on the country and its military leaders. Only a handful of countries, including China, Russia, and India, have continued to engage with the junta, arguing that a political solution is necessary.
Some recent developments, however, point in a troublingly different direction, particularly since junta chief Min Aung Hlaing staged a widely criticised election and assumed the role of civilian president. He subsequently renewed his diplomatic outreach, visiting several ASEAN member states, including Malaysia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia. It is worth recalling that, at their 2025 summit in Kuala Lumpur, ASEAN countries decided against sending an official election observation mission, citing the absence of conditions necessary for free, fair, and inclusive participation.
Hlaing’s visit to Malaysia, however, carried particular significance. One apparent focus of the engagement was the repatriation of approximately 200,000 Rohingyas currently living in Malaysia as refugees. Despite objections from the United Nations and several humanitarian organisations to forced repatriation amid continuing insecurity and the absence of a credible rehabilitation plan in Myanmar, Malaysia sent 1,476 Myanmar nationals back by sea in late September, ahead of Hlaing’s visit. Malaysia subsequently rolled out the red carpet for Min Aung Hlaing, welcoming him with a guard of honour on October 7, 2026.
Washington’s attitude towards Myanmar also appears to be taking a new turn. In September, US Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research Michael Vance visited Myanmar’s capital, Naypyidaw, and met Min Aung Hlaing. It was reportedly the first high-level meeting of its kind since the military seized power. Vance is also said to have held two other meetings with Myanmar officials in Tokyo, one before and another after his visit to Naypyidaw.
According to the BBC, the first indications of a shift in US policy towards Myanmar emerged during President Donald Trump’s tariff offensive. After Hlaing received a letter from Trump threatening an additional 40 percent tariff, the junta chief responded rather differently from leaders of other affected countries. He described the move as an “encouraging invitation to continue participating in the extraordinary Economy of the United States”.
In another development, reports emerged in late October that Japan had pushed for Myanmar’s removal from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) blacklist. Japan denied the reports. However, on November 5, a spokesperson for Myanmar’s government thanked Japan and a few other countries for “acknowledging Myanmar’s current progress”, without providing further details.
The latest controversy erupted on October 22, when Mike Waltz, the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, launched a scathing attack on the ICJ and its ad hoc judge, Navi Pillay, on the social media platform X. He accused Pillay of “tipping the scales on the ICJ’s current proceedings on Myanmar, intending to lower the legal threshold for proving genocide so that weakened and false standard can later be weaponised against American and allied soldiers whenever they raise a finger against terrorists that hide behind civilians.” He added: “Pillay, we see your agenda and we’ll be watching the ICJ’s handling of these proceedings very closely. As our actions against the ICC demonstrate, we will not allow globalist, faux-judges to weaponise the law against our troops, undermine our sovereignty, or put American lives at risk.”
Presumably, Waltz was reacting to Navi Pillay’s comments on Gaza genocide after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He wrote, “The Nobel Committee has disgraced itself by awarding the Peace Prize to Pillay. What a shameful choice to ‘honour’ someone who represents an ‘international community’ with a leftist, globalist, antisemitic agenda.”
The recent electoral success of Democrats in the United States, however, offers some grounds for optimism. It is worth remembering that the US State Department was among the first major government institutions to formally determine that Myanmar had committed genocide against the Rohingya. On March 21, 2022, following what it described as a rigorous factual and legal analysis, the then US Secretary of State formally determined that members of the Burmese military had committed genocide and crimes against humanity against the Rohingya. Since the Holocaust, the United States had made only seven other such determinations, making this the eighth. That determination has not, to date, been rescinded or revised.
One would therefore hope that Waltz’s public criticism of the ICJ reflects neither a fundamental reversal of Washington’s established position on Myanmar nor a rejection of international justice, but rather the Trump administration’s broader hostility towards international judicial institutions.
Since the February 2021 military coup, a new dimension has emerged in the question of Myanmar’s culpability. The ousted political leadership, including Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters, has itself become a target of military brutality. Against this backdrop, some Western governments appear increasingly inclined to downplay or obscure the role played by Suu Kyi and her civilian administration in the persecution of the Rohingyas. The ICJ proceedings and the forthcoming judgment offer an opportunity to establish greater legal clarity and ensure that responsibility for the atrocities is not obscured by subsequent political developments.
Ultimately, the ICJ judgment should help clarify Myanmar’s legal responsibility for the alleged genocide. But the most important question is what it will mean for the Rohingyas themselves. Will it bring them closer to justice, secure their rights, create conditions for safe, voluntary and dignified repatriation, and offer them a future free from persecution? The international community must ensure that the judgment translates into meaningful action and that the Rohingyas are not once again abandoned to the shifting political interests of powerful states.
(Published in The daily Star on November 9, 2026.)
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