In Search of Justice: Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingyas and the International Criminal Court

Could the International Criminal Court reach what had happened in Rakhine? By early 2018 rights organisations and heads of government were calling for a referral, and this piece works the jurisdictional problem rather than the moral one.

The evidence gathered by United Nations bodies pointed towards conduct capable of amounting to genocide and crimes against humanity under articles 6 and 7 of the Rome Statute. That was not the obstacle. Myanmar is not a state party, and a Security Council referral faced arithmetic in that chamber which nobody seriously expected to change. Seriousness was never the question; the route was.

Its value now is as a record of where the argument stood at the moment before it was tested. Within weeks the Prosecutor filed a request turning on deportation, a crime completed only when victims cross into the territory of another state, Bangladesh being a party. That request, and what Bangladesh should say about it, is the subject of the next piece in this set, and the two are best read in sequence.