UN top court to rule on emergency measures in Myanmar genocide case on Jan 23

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will announce a decision on a request for emergency measures in a genocide case against Myanmar on January 23, the Gambian Ministry of Justice said.

"The International Court of Justice @CIJ_ICJ will on Thursday 23rd January be delivering its decision on the Provisional Measures requested by The Gambia in its #Genocide case against Myanmar," the ministry tweeted on Tuesday.

The West African country had filed a lawsuit last November, alleging that Myanmar was committing "an ongoing genocide" against its minority Muslim Rohingya population.Gambia has accused Myanmar of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention in a military campaign that expelled more than 730,000 Rohingya from the country, urging the UN's top court to order "provisional measures" to prevent more harm to the Muslim minorities in the Rakhine state.

The matter centers around the massive crackdown in Myanmar's northern Rakhine State in 2017 that forced over 700,000 Muslims to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh.Myanmar's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, travelled to The Hague last month to defend her country against the charges.

She, however, vehemently denied the accusations and claimed that it has already punished its troops, who were proven to have committed abuses in Rakhine.Suu Kyi, a global human rights and democracy icon, said that the Rohingya conflict was a domestic matter for her country to resolve.