Can a Lawsuit Stop a Genocide? In a literal and and technical sense the Rohingya are being subjected to the crime above all crimes. And Gambia is the dragon slayer.

Oct 21, 2020 | Featured

Can a Lawsuit Stop a Genocide? In a literal and and technical sense the Rohingya are being subjected to the crime above all crimes. And Gambia is the dragon slayer.

Can a Lawsuit Stop a Genocide? | Commonweal Magazine   by  Paul C. Saunders 

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/can-lawsuit-stop-genocide

This interesting article by Paul C. Saunders looks at the recent decision of Gambia to take Myanmar (Burma) to the International Court of Justice for its brutality against the Rohingya – and the Court’s decision to uphold most of Gambia’s case.  Curiously, while the Court has ordered Myanmar to prevent genocide it didn’t grant Gambia’s request that Myanmar give access to the UN fact finding investigatory bodies.  At later stages of the proceedings this inability to independently collect evidence will be a severe impediment.

However, the Netherlands and Canada decided in September to intervene on the side of Gambia and to strengthen the legal team because they “consider it an obligation to support these efforts which are of concern to all humanity.”

That puts them on the right side of history – and hopefully might deter some of the shocking excesses of the Burmese military –  but I fear that we have a very long way to go before we have adequate judicial enforcement mechanisms that really do demonstrate that these are “concerns for all humanity.”  And meanwhile, the Rohingya are left stateless in degrading, intolerable man- made conditions and it doesn’t take a Court to tell us that this is undoubtedly a genocide – in the literal and technical sense of that word: the crime above all crimes, and not a word ever to be used lightly.

Lord David Alton

For 18 years David Alton was a Member of the House of Commons and today he is an Independent Crossbench Life Peer in the UK House of Lords.

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