In a momentous leap forward for international justice, Myanmar State Counsellor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi stood before the International Court of Justice in the Hague overnight on Wednesday, Australian time, to defend allegations of genocide.

The case against Myanmar was filed in November by the tiny African nation of Gambia. It relates to the alleged "widespread and systematic clearance operations" committed by the Myanmar military – the Tatmadaw – against the Rohingya people, which peaked in August 2017 and prompted the exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees across the border into Bangladesh. It’s alleged the clearance operations were "intended to destroy the Rohingya as a group".

Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Gambia's Justice Minister Aboubacarr Tambadou, left, listen to judges in the court room. Credit:AP

The case relies on the reports of a UN fact-finding mission on Myanmar, which have described soldiers firing indiscriminately into houses and fields, houses set on fire with people locked inside, mass rapes, and children thrown into rivers and onto fires. The fact-finding mission found there were reasonable grounds to conclude the Tatmadaw had perpetrated genocide against the Rohingya people, and urged the UN Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court. There was never much hope of this happening, however, because of the persistent objection of Russia and China. When the UK drafted a Security Council resolution on Myanmar late last year, Russia described it as "inappropriate, untimely and useless".

The Genocide Convention provides an alternative route to justice. The convention allows any state party to bring a case against another, and Myanmar and Gambia are both signatories. Gambia filed the case against Myanmar after its Justice Minister visited a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh. He said he "saw genocide written all over" the refugees' stories.