International Court of Justice Orders Burmese Authorities to Protect Rohingya Muslims from Genocide

In a major ruling, the U.N. International Court of Justice at The Hague has ordered Burma to “take all measures within its power” to protect Rohingya Muslims from genocide.

The court issued the ruling Thursday, calling the 600,000 Rohingya remaining in Burma, also known as Myanmar, “extremely vulnerable” to military violence.

The court ordered Burma to report regularly to the tribunal about its progress.

The ruling is a sharp rebuke of Burma’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who last month asked the court to drop the genocide case against Burma.

Suu Kyi is a Nobel Peace Prize winner who spent over a decade fighting against the Burmese military that she is now defending.

For more on the ICJ ruling, Democracy Now! speaks with Reed Brody, counsel and spokesperson for Human Rights Watch. “This is the most important court in the world intervening in one of the worst mass atrocity situations of our time while the atrocities are still happening,” says Brody. “It doesn’t really get more significant than that.”

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