(THE HAGUE, January 2026)— Fortify Rights’s participation in the historic Rohingya-genocide hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague marked a significant moment in the organization’s long-standing work to document atrocity crimes against Rohingya civilians and support efforts to hold Myanmar accountable under international law.
From January 12 to 29, 2026, Fortify Rights CEO Matthew Smith joined The Gambia’s official delegation during the merits hearings at the ICJ in The Gambia v. Myanmar, a case concerning Myanmar’s alleged violations of the Genocide Convention against the ethnic-Rohingya people. Since the case was filed in 2019, Fortify Rights has provided The Gambia with evidence of genocidal acts against the Rohingya by the Myanmar military.
Evidence documented by Fortify Rights, including investigative reports and witness testimonies, featured prominently in the public proceedings. Fortify Rights was referenced 133 times throughout the proceedings in January, including 43 direct verbal mentions in oral arguments by counsel from both parties and in statements by judges. The Gambia’s legal team presented Fortify Rights’s documentation to help establish the organized and state-directed nature of Myanmar’s attacks against the Rohingya, as well as the legal elements of the genocidal acts carried out against them. Myanmar’s counsel, on the other hand, predictably challenged the same bodies of evidence in an effort to undermine their value before the Court.
The Gambia drew on They Gave Them Long Swords (2018), the most referenced Fortify Rights publication during the proceedings, to demonstrate that Myanmar authorities systematically confiscated household knives from Rohingya civilians while simultaneously arming and training neighboring non-Rohingya villagers before activating them to kill Rohingya en masse. The Gambia also referenced the Fortify Rights report Tools of Genocide (2019) in relation to the National Verification Card process in Myanmar, arguing that it formed part of a broader system of coercion, persecution, and denial of citizenship rights against the Rohingya, aiding the genocide.
Fortify Rights’s report The Torture in My Mind (2020) also supported The Gambia’s submissions on mental harm as an act of genocide, with counsel arguing that the high prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression among survivors demonstrated that psychological trauma was a deliberate tool of genocide rather than a byproduct of war. The Gambia argued that Fortify Rights’s findings were “consistent and corroborative” across multiple independent sources, including satellite imagery and survivor testimony, and urged the Court to place “substantial weight” on Fortify Rights’s reports.
Myanmar’s counsel sought to discredit NGO evidence, including Fortify Rights’s documentation, arguing that such reports should be treated as hearsay and given little or no evidentiary weight. The fact that both parties engaged extensively with Fortify Rights’s work underscored the relevance of the organization’s investigations to one of the most significant international justice proceedings concerning the Rohingya genocide.