The countries had asked to intervene in the case at the ICJ, also known as the World Court, in November 2023.

“The seven States concerned will… be allowed to submit their written observations on the subject-matter of their interventions,” the ICJ also said in the statement.

“The Court will determine at a later date whether they should ICJ be authorized to make observations in the course of the oral proceedings.”

In 2017 Gambia, a predominantly Muslim West African country, filed a case against Myanmar at the ICJ accusing it of committing genocide against the Rohingya, a minority Muslim group in Myanmar.

A United Nations fact-finding mission concluded that a 2017 military campaign by Myanmar that drove 730,000 Rohingya into neighbouring Bangladesh had included “genocidal acts”.

Myanmar has denied genocide, rejecting the U.N. findings as “biased and flawed”. It says its crackdown was aimed at Rohingya rebels who had carried out attacks.

The World Court rejected Myanmar’s objections to the genocide proceedings in July 2022, paving the way for the case to be heard in full but no date has yet been set.ey)