Why Myanmar Is on Trial for Genocide at the UN’s Top Court

For years, Myanmar’s Rohingya — a Muslim minority cast by nationalists as outsiders — have lived in legal and political limbo, as their rights have been steadily stripped away.

The long-simmering crisis erupted in 2017, when a military crackdown described by United Nations investigators as “ethnic cleansing” carried out with “genocidal intent” forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee Myanmar and into neighboring Bangladesh.