Inside Geneva: Myanmar, women and justice

Send us Fan MailOn Inside Geneva this week, we look at women fighting for justice.In 2017, Myanmar’s military launched an assault on the Rohingya population. Almost a million were displaced, there were reports of horrific violations: rape, the murder of children, including babies.“The accounts that affected me most are those of children. Now I’m a grandfather, I sit there and listen and I think of my own kids when they were young and my grandkids now. How can you not?,” says Chris Sidoti from the Myanmar fact-finding mission.The UN investigators who documented the evidence were shocked, but feared there would be no accountability.“They asked me for justice and when I asked them 'why are you here, why have you been waiting all day in the camps', many of them were not able to walk, they had not eaten and they wanted justice. And at that time, I really thought it would not be possible for justice to come,” says Antonia Mulvey from Legal Action Worldwide.But now, almost a decade later, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is hearing a case of genocide against Myanmar.“To see now, action in the ICJ: I still know how many years it’s going to take. I still know that the Myanmar butchers who are responsible for what happened may never individually be brought to justice. But I certainly live in hope that one day they will,” says Sidoti.Mulvey is at the ICJ, supporting women who are testifying about what happened. “If you were in that court, I can assure you, international law is alive and it is fighting very hard,” she says.Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva.Get in touch!Email us at [email protected]: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_enThank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter. For more stories on the international Geneva please visit www.swissinfo.ch/Host: Imogen FoulkesProduction assitant: Claire-Marie GermainDistribution: Sara PasinoMarketing: Xin Zhang