Gambia on Monday told judges at the United Nations’ top court that Myanmar targeted minority Muslim Rohingya for destruction and made their lives a nightmare in a landmark case accusing Myanmar of genocide.

It is the first genocide case the International Court of Justice is hearing in full in more than a decade.

The outcome will have repercussions beyond Myanmar, likely affecting South Africa’s genocide case at the ICJ against Israel over the war in Gaza.

Myanmar has denied genocide.

Gambia’s Minister of Justice, Dawda Jallow, told ICJ judges the Rohingya were simple people with dreams of living in peace and dignity.

“They have been targeted for destruction,” he said.

“Myanmar has denied them their dream; in fact, it turned their lives into a nightmare, subjecting them to the most horrific violence and destruction one could imagine,” according to Jallow.

The predominantly Muslim West African country of Gambia filed the case at the ICJ - also known as the World Court - in 2019, accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya, a mainly Muslim minority in the remote western Rakhine state.

Myanmar’s armed forces launched an offensive in 2017 that forced at least 730,000 Rohingya from their homes and into neighbouring Bangladesh, where they recounted killings, mass rape and arson.

A UN fact-finding mission concluded the 2017 military offensive had included “genocidal acts”.

Speaking in The Hague before the hearings, Rohingya victims said they want the long-awaited court case to deliver justice.

“We are hoping for a positive result that will tell the world that Myanmar committed genocide, and we are the victims of that, and we deserve justice,” Yousuf Ali, a 52-year-old Rohingya refugee who says he was tortured by the Myanmar military, told Reuters.

Myanmar authorities rejected that report, saying its military offensive was a legitimate counter-terrorism campaign in response to attacks by militants.

In the 2019 preliminary hearings in the ICJ case, Myanmar’s then leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, rejected Gambia’s accusations of genocide as “incomplete and misleading”.

The hearings at the ICJ will mark the first time that Rohingya victims of the alleged atrocities will be heard by an international court, although those sessions will be closed to the public and the media for sensitivity and privacy reasons.

In total, the hearings at the ICJ will span three weeks. The ICJ is the UN’s highest court and deals with disputes between states.

Myanmar has been in further turmoil since 2021, when the military toppled the elected civilian government and violently suppressed pro-democracy protests, sparking a nationwide armed rebellion.

The country is currently holding phased elections, which have been criticised by the United Nations, some Western countries and human rights groups as not free or fair.

Gambia took up the Rohingya’s cause in 2019, backed by the 57-nation Organisation for Islamic Cooperation.