The Maldives has sought an intervention to a case submitted at International Court of Justice (ICJ) in an effort to advocate for the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar.
The Gambian government initiated the case with the ICJ in November 2019, accusing Myanmar's military and others of committing atrocities against the Rohingya since 2016, allegedly violating the 1948 Genocide Convention.
The decision to intervene in the case was made during a United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in February 2020. Six other countries, previously committed to participating in the case, have now submitted the required documents.
The Attorney General's Office stated that the Maldives' involvement is primarily based on the interpretation of the "duty to punish genocide" as defined by the Genocide Convention.
The international legal team representing the Maldives includes Amal Clooney, a lawyer from Doughty Street Chambers in the UK, and Professor Philippa Webb, a lawyer for Twenty Essex in the UK.
In 2017, the Maldives severed all trade ties with Myanmar in response to the atrocities against the Rohingya. The country has actively co-sponsored resolutions on the issue, submitting them to the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council.
Currently, nearly one million Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar in 2017 due to military persecution are living in dire conditions in overcrowded camps in Bangladesh. An estimated 600,000 Rohingya Muslims are still in Rakhine state facing ongoing abuses by the Myanmar government, with limited access to essential resources such as food, healthcare, education, and income.