Aung San Suu Kyi to Defend Myanmar in ICJ | 11 Dec 2019

• Recently, Gambia has filed an application at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Myanmar of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention.
  
  • It is the first international legal attempt to bring Myanmar to ICJ over alleged mass killings of the Rohingya minority in 2017.
• Muslim-majority Gambia, has filed this application on behalf of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
• Aung San Suu Kyi will defend Myanmar in the Hague against accusations of genocide. She is a Myanmar’s State Counsellor and Nobel Peace laureate (awarded in 1990).
• Myanmar, however, faces a number of legal challenges over the fate of the Rohingya, including a probe by the International Criminal Court (a separate war crimes tribunal) in the Hague and a lawsuit in Argentina.

Convention on Genocide

• It was adopted in 1948 in response to the atrocities committed during World War II and a UN resolution which recognised that "genocide is an international crime, which entails the national and international responsibility of individual persons and states."
• The Convention on Genocide was among the first United Nations (UN) conventions addressing humanitarian issues.
• The Convention has since then been widely accepted by the international community and ratified by a majority of States.