Event Description
Join PILPG, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, leading experts, and Rohingya civil society representatives on September 12 at 9:00 am ET / 7:00 pm Dhaka time for a reflection on the 7th anniversary of the 2017 Rohingya genocide. This event will provide a platform to reflect on the atrocities committed by the Myanmar military, address the ongoing challenges faced by the Rohingya community, and explore actionable pathways to justice and accountability.
On August 25, 2017, the Myanmar military unleashed a brutal campaign against the Rohingya people in northern Rakhine State, perpetrating widespread atrocities, including mass killings, sexual violence, and the destruction of entire villages. Over 700,000 Rohingya were forced to flee to Bangladesh, where they continue to reside in overcrowded and precarious refugee camps. These atrocities, following decades of systemic violence and discrimination against the Rohingya, have been widely recognized as acts of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Seven years on, the Rohingya community continues to endure severe human rights abuses both within Myanmar and in displacement. The situation in Myanmar has further deteriorated since the military coup of early 2021, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis and ongoing conflict in Rakhine State. Rohingya civilians remain vulnerable to violence, displacement, and lack of access to essential humanitarian aid. In Bangladesh, the volatile political situation, marked by the recent removal of Prime Minister Hasina, coupled with diminishing international support and restrictive domestic policies, has created a perilous environment for Rohingya refugees.
Currently, there is no viable prospect for the safe, dignified, and rights-respecting return of the Rohingya to Rakhine. Despite various international justice mechanisms aimed at addressing the crimes committed against them, the Rohingya victims of genocide have seen little progress toward accountability.
On this significant anniversary, PILPG aims to underscore the urgent need for accountability and remind the international community that the Rohingya crisis remains unresolved, with the perpetrators of genocide still unpunished.
This event will feature an expert panel discussion, including representatives from the Rohingya Justice Initiative, a Rohingya-led civil society group dedicated to human rights documentation and accountability. The discussion will be moderated by Professor Milena Sterio, Managing Director of PILPG.
We invite you to join PILPG in standing in solidarity with the Rohingya community and renewing the call for justice and accountability.
This is part of the PILPG Thought Leadership Initiative. The Initiative focuses on prominent international law and international affairs topics and organizes monthly expert roundtables to share expertise and reflections from our work on peace negotiations, post-conflict constitution drafting, and war crimes prosecution.
Orrick is an international law firm founded in San Francisco, California. The firm advises on transactions, litigation, and regulatory matters for venture-backed companies, public companies, E&I funds, financial institutions, and governments. Orrick is a longstanding PILPG pro bono partner and has collaborated with us extensively on Rohingya accountability work.
Speakers
Kaoru Okuizumi
Kaoru Okuizumi is a Deputy Head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar.
Before joining the Mechanism, Ms. Okuizumi was the Director of the UN Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict, established by the Security Council to assist national authorities to ensure criminal accountability for conflict-related sexual violence. Prior to that, she served as the Deputy Chief of the Justice and Corrections Service of the UN Department of Peace Operations.
Ms. Okuizumi’s experiences in international and hybrid courts include assignments at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and most recently as Deputy Registrar at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Ms. Okuizumi has also worked in UN peacekeeping operations and field offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kosovo and Nepal.
Ms. Okuizumi is a member of the New York State Bar and a graduate of the University of Chicago, the New York University School of Law and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. She was also a Wasserstein Fellow at Harvard Law School. Ms. Okuizumi is on the Board of Directors of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations.
Arsalan Suleman
M. Arsalan Suleman is a partner in Foley Hoag’s International Litigation & Arbitration Practice. As a former senior diplomat and policymaker at the U.S. Department of State, he advises clients with a nuanced understanding of international law, politics, and diplomacy. His practice focuses on representing sovereign states in international disputes. Arsalan also advises his clients—including states, corporations, NGOs, and individuals—on global human rights matters.
Arsalan frequently represents sovereign states in inter-state disputes before the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, UN treaty bodies, and arbitral tribunals. These disputes have involved genocide, human rights violations, territorial and maritime boundary claims, and other public international law claims. Most notably, Arsalan represents The Gambia in its lawsuit before the International Court of Justice against Myanmar for the Rohingya genocide.
Kate Gibson
Kate Gibson is a PILPG Senior Peace Fellow and Senior Legal Advisor. She has been representing accused before the international criminal courts and tribunals since 2005, including as Co-Counsel of Jean-Pierre Bemba and Bosco Ntaganda before the ICC, Co-Counsel of Charles Taylor before the SCSL, and Co-Counsel of Radovan Karadžić before the IRMCT. At the ICTR, she was Lead Counsel of Justin Mugenzi and Co-Counsel of Jean-Baptiste Gatete. Currently, Kate is the Lead Counsel of Paul Rusesabagina, detained in Rwanda, and is part of the legal team of former Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi before the KSC. She also represents a group of Rohingya victims in the Myanmar/Bangladesh pre-trial proceedings before the ICC, and is Lead Counsel of Prosper Mugiraneza, detained Niger, before the IRMCT. Kate is an Associate Tenant of Doughty Street Chambers, holds an LL.M in International Law from Cambridge University.
Dr. Gregory P. Noone
Dr. Gregory P. Noone, Ph.D., J.D., is a Senior Peace Fellow and Senior Legal Advisor for PILPG. Dr. Noone currently leads the Yemen track- two diplomacy team and serves as the Senior Legal Advisor for the Human Rights Documentation Solutions project. Dr. Noone has conducted PILPG justice system assessments in Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire as well as provided transitional justice assistance in post-Gaddafi Libya and to the Syrian opposition. Dr. Noone was also part of the international effort investigating the Myanmar government’s atrocities committed against their Rohingya population. He worked as an investigator in the refugee camps in Bangladesh and as one of the legal experts on the report’s findings. Dr. Noone also worked as a Senior Program Officer for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), an independent, nonpartisan federal institution created by the U.S. Congress to promote research, education, and training on the prevention, management and peaceful resolution of international conflicts. While at USIP, Noone received a Special Act Award for his work in Afghanistan. Dr. Noone is a Captain in the United States Navy and has served as the Commanding Officer of the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies (DIILS) reserve unit and as the Commanding Officer of the Navy JAG International and Operational Law reserve unit as well as the Director of the Department of Defense’s Periodic Review Secretariat (PRS). Dr. Noone previously served on active duty as a judge advocate in the U.S. Navy. He held various positions in the Navy including the Head of the International Law Branch and the Foreign Military Rights Affairs Branch in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) International and Operational Law Division at the Pentagon. Dr. Noone also served at the DIILS, where he trained senior military, governmental and non-governmental civilian personnel in the Law of Armed Conflict, Human Rights and other international law topics, in over sixty countries (and has been to 95 countries). Most notably, he has trained members of the Iraqi National Congress, the post- genocide government in Rwanda, the post-Taliban government in Afghanistan, civil society in the Sudan, and senior members of the Russian government. Dr. Noone is the co-author (with Laurie R. Blank) of the widely used textbook: International Law and Armed Conflict: Fundamental Principles and Contemporary Challenges in the Law of War Second Edition (Aspen / Wolters Kluwer Publishing 2019).
MODERATOR
Professor Milena Sterio
Milena Sterio is the Managing Director of PILPG and the Charles R. Emrick Jr. - Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She is a leading expert on international law, international criminal law and human rights. Sterio leads PILPG’s Thought Leadership Initiative.
Sterio is one of six permanent editors of the prestigious IntLawGrrls blog, and a frequent contributor to the blog focused on international law, policy and practice. In the spring of 2013, Sterio was selected as a Fulbright Scholar, spending the semester in Baku, Azerbaijan, at Baku State University. While in Baku, she had the opportunity to teach and conduct research on secession issues under international law related to the province of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh. Serving as a maritime piracy law expert, she has participated in meetings of the United Nations Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia as well as in the work of the United Nations Global Counterterrorism Forum. Sterio has also assisted piracy prosecutions in Mauritius, Kenya and the Seychelles Islands. Sterio is a graduate of Cornell Law School and the University of Paris I, and was an associate in the New York City firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton before joining the ranks of academia full time. She has published seven books and numerous law review articles. Her latest book, “The Syrian Conflict’s Impact on International Law,” (co-authored with Paul Williams and Michael Scharf) was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.