How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT *
This article asks what became of the Rohingya four years after the mass displacement of 2017 and whether any prospect of peace exists for them. The author outlines who the Rohingya are, the denial of their citizenship by Myanmar and their treatment as illegal immigrants, and the escalation of 2017 in which attacks on police posts were followed by military operations that drove some seven hundred thousand people into Bangladesh amid killings, sexual violence and the destruction of villages. The international response is then reviewed, including the United Nations finding of genocidal intent, the case brought before the International Court of Justice by The Gambia, and the provisional measures ordered by that court. The article closes with the present situation: roughly six hundred thousand Rohingya remaining in Myanmar, a comparable number in the world’s largest refugee camp, no returns following the repatriation agreement, and a military coup that makes renewed escalation likely.
KEYWORDS *
Rohingya, Myanmar, Bangladesh, statelessness, genocide, International Court of Justice, Kutupalong, repatriation, citizenship, ethnic cleansing, refugee camps, military coup
INTRODUCTION
Where are the Rohingyas now? Could they find peace?
In 2017 the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, became victims of ethnic cleansing, so the UN. Thousands of people flee into the neighboring country Bangladesh to save their lives. They are not acknowledged as citizens from Myanmar by the government, until today. A century-old conflict in the predominantly Buddhist country had turned into an outburst of violence and led to a humanitarian crisis in the neighboring country Bangladesh. But where are the 700.000 refugees today, after 4 years? Did they find a new region to live in peace?
MAIN CORPUS
Main Content
Thank you for taking your time to focus back on a century-old conflict. Asking some people, the main impression seems to be that the conflict is over.
In 2021, in which another old conflict between the Myanmar government and another minority – the Karen people – escalated. But that is a whole other story, which we might look at later. First I would like to give a brief overview of the history of the conflict between Myanmar and the Rohingya in order to understand the background.
Who are the Rohingya?
The Rohingya are the largest Muslim group with their own language and culture in the predominantly Buddhist country. Beginning in 2017, the number was around one million in Myanmar. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described them as “one of, if not, the most discriminated people in the world”. One of Myanmar’s many ethnic minorities.Their ancestors were Arab traders who have been in the region for generations.
Myanmar denies the Rohingyas citizenship and officially refused to recognize them as people in 2014. They are seen as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Since the 70s, Rohingyas have migrated from all over the region. During the last years, they’ve always been facing violence and abuses by the security forces of Myanmar. But in 2017 the tensions escalated when Rohingya militants fought back and launched deadly attacks on more than 30 police posts from Myanmar.
700.000 people fled from military troops, backed by local Buddhist mobs, into Bangladesh. Villages were burned, women and girls raped and abused and civilians killed, so Amnesty International and Médicines Sans Frontières. At least 6700 people, including over 700 children under the age of 5 were killed after the violent escalation. At the same time, the government puts the number of dead at 400 and many villages were destroyed after September 2017, when Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi said, security forces operations had ended.
What is the international response?
Myanmar’s military got accused of carrying out mass killings and rapes with “genocidal intent” by the UN in August 2018. The case was brought to the International Court of Justice by a small Muslim minority of Gambia in 2019. On behalf of dozens of other Muslim countries, they called for emergency measures to be taken against the Myanmar military. The Nobel prize laureate and state counselor of Myanmar Aung San Duu Kyi rejected allegations of genocide when she appeared at the court in December 2019.
The court called the 600.000 Rohingya remaining in Myanmar “extremely vulnerable” to military violence. The court ordered the country to report regularly to the tribunal about its progress – a sharp offensive against Aung San Suu Kyi, who asked the court to drop the genocide case. Aung San Suu Kyi spent over a decade fighting against the Burmese military that she is now defending. Reed Brody, counsel and spokesperson for Human Rights Watch: “This is the most important court in the world intervening in one of the worst mass atrocity situations of our time while the atrocities are still happening. It doesn’t really get more significant than that.” 600.000 Rohingya are remaining in Myanmar under inhuman circumstances with a “serious risk that genocidal actions may occur and recur”, so UN investigators.
What about the 700.000 refugees from 2017? Where are they today?
The refugees in 2017 had joined thousands of Rohingya who had fled Myanmar in previous years already. Kutupalong, the largest refugee camp in the world, has more than 600.000 refugees alone. In March 2019 Bangladesh announced a restriction to let Rohingya cross the border. After an agreement for the return of refugees in early 2018, none returned. They didn’t want to go back unless they were given citizenship.
SUMMARY *
The article’s central observation is one of attention rather than fact: the situation it describes has not improved, and it has ceased to be reported. Four years after the displacement, roughly the same number of people remain in Myanmar without citizenship and a comparable number remain in Bangladesh without status, a repatriation agreement has produced no returns because the condition the refugees set has not been met, and the host country has reached the limit of what it is willing to absorb. The military coup of February 2021 removed whatever civilian restraint existed on the institution responsible for the events of 2017.
CONCLUSION
From the media point of view, the Rohingya crisis is no longer making headlines. With over 600.000 Rohingyas in Myanmar and over 700.000 in Bangladesh.
Did they find peace?
Not really. Bangladesh refused to take more refugees because they are still working on reaching their own Millenium Development Goals. The developing country barely has capacities for all these refugees. The biggest refugee camp all over the world is at its limit. And it is just a matter of time, until when the situation in Myanmar escalates again after the military coup in February. 1.3 Million stateless people without a perspective of their future and the future of their families are living at an existential minimum with limited access to food, water, and health care while communicable diseases are widely spreading. A genocide is happening right before our eyes, yet many governments still remain silent. The Myanmar government must stop this persecution. Are we really going to let 2017 repeat?
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The obstacle at the centre of this situation is stated plainly in the article and deserves to be treated as the starting point rather than as a detail: the refugees will not return without citizenship, and Myanmar will not grant it. Everything else follows. A repatriation agreement that does not address status is an agreement to move people from one condition of statelessness to another, which is why none of the returns arranged in 2018 took place. Any credible process must begin with the legal framework that excluded them, principally the citizenship law of 1982, rather than with logistics.
That is a long term prospect and it should not become an argument for doing nothing meanwhile. Two things are achievable in the interval. The first is the position of those in Bangladesh, where the framing of their presence as temporary has led to restrictions on education, work and movement that produce a generation without schooling or skills. Formal education in their own language and in the curriculum of their country of origin, and lawful access to work in defined sectors, prepare people for return rather than obstructing it, and the costs to the host state can be met internationally. Bangladesh has carried this burden with limited support, and responsibility sharing, through funding and through resettlement places in third countries, is the practical form that solidarity takes.
The second is the position of those who remain in Myanmar, whose situation attracts less attention than that of the displaced and is in some respects worse. Freedom of movement, access to health care and education, and the removal of the restrictions confining people to camps within Rakhine State are matters on which international engagement can be directed now, and they are the measures that would most reduce the risk of the recurrence the article fears.
On accountability, the article is right that the proceedings before the International Court of Justice matter, and it is worth being clear about what they can and cannot do. That court determines state responsibility rather than individual guilt; the provisional measures it ordered are binding but unenforced; and the process will take years. Alongside it, the mechanism established by the Human Rights Council continues to collect evidence for future prosecutions, and cases have been brought in national courts under universal jurisdiction. None of this stops what is happening. All of it ensures that a record exists, which is what makes a reckoning possible whenever the political conditions allow one.
Finally, a word about the article’s own contribution. It is written to counter the fading of attention, and that is a legitimate purpose for a journal such as this. Sustained international attention is not a substitute for policy, but its absence removes the pressure on which every other measure depends, and in a situation where the affected population has no voice in any forum that matters, the willingness of others to keep describing their circumstances is not a small thing.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
References:
“Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar” https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/rohingya-crisis-myanmar
“Myanmar Rohingya: What you need to know about the crisis” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41566561 Published January 2020
“International Court of Justice Orders Burmese Authorities to Protect Rohingya Muslims from Genocide” https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/01/27/international-court-justice-orders-burmese-authorities-protect-rohingya-muslims Published in January 2020
“Three years later: Rohingyas Muslims continue to face persecution and are torn apart from their homes” https://thegatewayonline.ca/2021/04/three-years-later-rohingya-muslims-continue-to-face-persecution-and-are-torn-apart-from-their-homes/ Published in April 2021
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
International Court of Justice, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar), Order on Provisional Measures, 23 January 2020.
Report of the Independent International Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar, United Nations Human Rights Council, A/HRC/39/64, 2018.
Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, established by Human Rights Council Resolution 39/2 (2018).
Burma Citizenship Law, 1982, and the revocation of temporary registration cards in 2015.
Memorandum of Understanding between Myanmar and Bangladesh on repatriation, 23 November 2017, and the tripartite arrangement with UNHCR, 2018.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and partners, Joint Response Plan for the Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis, annual editions, Cox’s Bazar.
Advisory Commission on Rakhine State (2017). Towards a Peaceful, Fair and Prosperous Future for the People of Rakhine, final report, chaired by Kofi Annan.