🇲🇲 ICJ orders Myanmar homework

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Also, last year I went hard on emails (and picked up some brilliant work from that!) but I’m keen to get back to features. Any editors out there, give me a yell! 

Today we’re looking into the International Court of Justice and the case against Myanmar. It’s not over yet. It won’t be over for years. But, this is an important first step and will have a wider impact on the country beyond Rakhine State. 

Before we get into it, for the background I’m loving this explainer from Vox. We’ve talked about this case extensively, but new readers and those after a refresher: go here first, it’s great.

Erin Cook

What the court said:

The first International Court of Justice (ICJ) provisional ruling was deopped last week and Myanmar has a lot of work to do. Myanmar’s government is expected to:

• actively seek to prevent genocide against the Rohingya, under all definitions of genocide;

• prevent the military and paramilitary groups from carrying out, conspiring to carry out, or inciting genocide;

• preserve all evidence related to the allegations of human rights abuses in the affected region; and

• report on the situation every six months through the proceedings of the ICJ.

As summarised by Azeem Ibrahim for Foreign Policy. Ibrahim goes on to write that this isn’t overly harsh, but a good start this early into proceedings. The ICJ is typically conservative in its rulings, he adds, but has been emphatic in the harm and damage experienced by the Rohingya people.

David J. Scheffer for the Council on Foreign Relations reiterates that proving charges of genocide are extraordinarily difficult. But, by accepting five of the six provisional measures the Gambia had asked for — as well as recent comments from the United Nations saying the community remains at risk — justice may eventually prevail. 

Now, Myanmar must prepare a report to be delivered to the court on or before a May 23 deadline on how it is responding. Will it do it? “Do not bet the house on it,” Scheffer writes.

No love lost

Myanmar will likely shoulder up closer to China if Western states come through on sanction threats. This is not really a surprise, China (and other Asian states) have been less interested in economic signalling than Western counterparts since the start of the crisis. Myanmar received a boost earlier this month with President Xi Jinping visiting the country earlier this month.

“The more sanctions Western countries impose on us, the more likely that is to boost our ties with our Asian alliances. We’ve opened the door to everyone,” Commerce Minister Than Myint said in an interview in Naypyidaw. 

It’s not an either/or situation, although it’s frequently posited that way across the region. Being buds with China is read as thumbing up the nose to the US despite most of Asean having relationships with China centuries before the US was founded, but whatever. 

It does, however, raise some interesting questions about the efficacy of the West wielding its economic power as an incentive. We’re seeing it here, similarly in Cambodia and in a different way in Indonesia and Malaysia. What does ‘winning’ look like in a multipolar Asia?

It certainly doesn’t look like a blanket travel ban. US President Trump plans to expand his highly controversial travel ban to include a string of African countries — and Myanmar. The focus of the US-based reporting here has been primarily on the Muslim-majority African states. This piece for the Diplomat lays out the strategic case for the US to stay on if not the good side, at least the not antagonistic side. 

As the Diplomat piece notes, much of the details of the ban are unknown including whether it applies to all citizens of a country or just a particular set and when it will come into effect. Well, we better work it out soon since Asean is meant to meet Trump in Las Vegas in March. Which, after Bangkok, is a whole other mess but we’ll get there. 

The Lady speaks for herself

Will this finally end the avalanche of ‘what went wrong with Aung San Suu Kyi?’ pieces. Not likely. But we rarely hear from the Lady herself. Here she is for the Financial Times in her own words: