World Court Genocide Ruling Looms as Governments Re-Engage Myanmar Junta

By Marcus Bennett

The International Court of Justice will deliver its judgment in The Hague on Nov. 19 in the genocide case against Myanmar, a ruling that lands just as the United States, Japan and Southeast Asian governments ease their isolation of the military regime that seized power in 2021. Gambia brought the case, alleging that Myanmar is conducting a genocide against the ethnic Rohingya people in northern Rakhine State. The stakes for practitioners are unusual: sanctions lawyers in Washington are already unwinding restrictions, while human rights counsel watch a jurisdiction where diplomatic recognition is moving faster than legal accountability.

Since 2025, President Donald Trump has lifted sanctions on companies and individuals with close ties to the junta, including generals, according to reporting by The Diplomat and Al Jazeera. In September, a representative of the Trump administration held meetings with the junta itself, raising the question of whether Washington now acknowledges the coup leaders as the country's legitimate government. They control less than a third of Myanmar's territory.

Myanmar holds large deposits of rare earth minerals. Those deposits have drawn major investment from China. Media reports speculate that Trump lowered tensions with Naypyidaw with an eye toward those critical minerals.

What has the shift meant in practice?

Kyaw Win, director of the U.K.-based Burma Human Rights Network, did not mince words about the American moves. "Washington's decision to repeatedly lift sanctions against individuals and businesses connected to Myanmar's military sends the disgraceful message that complicity in mass atrocities can be overlooked when it suits U.S. political and economic interests," he said.

Japan has moved as well. In October, Tokyo began pushing the Financial Action Task Force to remove Myanmar from its global financial crimes blacklist, a step that would ease doing business in the country.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations once excluded the regime from its annual summit meetings. Months after the 2021 coup, ASEAN demanded the junta follow a Five-Point Consensus, which required restraining violence and allowing special envoys to meet all parties, among other promises. The regime never met those demands.

Yet engagement is now accelerating across the region. Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing has visited India, China, Russia and five ASEAN states this year: Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Observers expect Brunei and Indonesia, the bloc's biggest economy, to meet the junta soon.

Has ASEAN abandoned its common position?

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, once one of ASEAN's most outspoken Myanmar critics, hosted Hlaing in Kuala Lumpur in October. He pledged to bring the nation back into the fold. Shortly after, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who had also opposed the junta, called for ASEAN to change its approach, saying the Five-Point Consensus did not work.

Kyaw Win rejected the framing that the bloc is abandoning anything. "I reject the premise that ASEAN is abandoning a common position on Myanmar because ASEAN has never taken a meaningful position capable of constraining the military," he told Courthouse News in an email.

He traced the failure to the bloc's founding gesture. "The Five-Point Consensus was fundamentally flawed from day one, when ASEAN invited Min Aung Hlaing (just two months after he led an illegal military coup) to negotiate Myanmar's future," he said.

How deadly is the conflict on the ground?

Civilians die weekly in the crossfire between resistance groups and a junta trying to seize full control of the country. A U.N. report dated Oct. 29 found that more than 8,300 civilians have been killed by the military since the 2021 coup. In total, more than 100,000 people have been killed and 5.1 million displaced, according to the Global Conflict Tracker.

The junta overthrew a democratically elected government and placed its shadow leader, Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest. Hlaing then won what observers called a sham election in April.

The Myanmar Accountability Project receives fresh reports on massacres nearly every week, it told Courthouse News. Its director, Christopher Gunness, called the engagement by ASEAN and Washington "appalling."

"It signals to the world what we already know, which is that international law and human rights protection mean absolutely nothing to the Trump administration, which puts profit, particularly for Trump administration officials, as a top priority," Gunness said in a video interview.

What does the re-engagement mean for the minerals race?

Helene Maria Kyed, a Myanmar specialist at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said the April election was used to speed up foreign recognition, a result Myanmar observers had feared. "It's unfortunate. The U.S. has historically been a front-runner in supporting democratic institutions in Myanmar, and this connection has actually been quite strong with the Republican Party," she told Courthouse News by phone.

She doubted the American gambit would pay off in the mining sector. "With China's strong presence in Myanmar's rare earth minerals sector, I find it difficult to see the U.S. gaining a strong foothold there. And I find it a shame, because it's a high price for the U.S. to pay after having invested so much in a democratic Myanmar," Kyed said.

For now, the calendar sets the pace. The Hague delivers its judgment on Nov. 19. Washington has already lifted its sanctions. The junta's generals, once pariahs, are collecting invitations.