Rohingya genocide trial: When can we expect the verdict?

Myanmar's civil leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, will personally lead the defence of her country against the genocide lawsuit brought against them by the Gambia. 

The case will be heard from December 10 at The Hague in the International Court of Justice, the highest court of the United Nations.

Closing submission by both parties will take place on Thursday. Hearings on the central accusation of genocide could start in 2020, reports Reuters.

The timeline for a decision on the provisional measures can be relatively quick. However, it is possible that any verdict in the Rohingya genocide case could take up to five years.

There is a high legal requirement for genocide finding. After World War Two, only three cases have been recognized under international law: late 1970s Cambodia; 1994 Rwanda; and 1995 Srebrenica, Bosnia.

Bosnia and Herzegovina asked for provisional measures when filing its Genocide Convention case against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on March 20, 1993. In that case the ICJ issued an order several weeks later, on April 8, 1993, reports the Human Rights Watch.

The quickest verdict came in the Srebrenica massacre genocide case. Following public hearings held between 27 February 2006 and 9 May 2006, the Court rendered its Judgment on the merits on 26 February 2007.

However, the Khmer Rouge trials in Cambodia took nine years to get the first case to trial and, 12 years and $320m later, it has convicted only three men. Most of those responsible for the killings, including Pol Pot, died before they could be tried, reports the Telegraph.

In Rwanda's case, a report by the Telegraph shows that after almost 20 years of legal argument and an estimated bill of $1.7bn (£1bn), the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) brought only 70 individuals out of thousands involved in the 1994 Rwandan genocide to justice.

"Proving genocide has been difficult because of the high bar set by its 'intent requirement' - that is showing the genocidal acts, say killings, were carried out with the specific intent to eliminate a people on the basis of their ethnicity," Richard Dicker, head of the international justice program at New York-based Human Rights Watch told Reuters.

Previously, Myanmar dismissed virtually all allegations made against its soldiers by refugees, including mass rape, massacres, and incendiary.

Reuters reports that the UN investigators concluded that sexual violence committed by Myanmar troops against Rohingya women and girls in 2017 indicated the military intended to destroy the mainly Muslim ethnic minority.

Myanmar's government failed to hold anyone accountable and was therefore responsible "under the Genocide Convention for its failure to investigate and punish acts of genocide", the investigators' report said.

Those findings, along with other court cases launched against Myanmar in recent weeks, could play an important role in the ICJ proceedings.

"It's difficult to overstate the importance of what is unfolding at the ICJ," Dicker, at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters "The global significance lies in that this is the first time the Genocide Convention has been put to use in the way its framers intended."