Durable solutions to the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar

United Nations
21 June 2023

 

At
Panel discussion on durable solutions to the Rohingya crisis and to end human rights violations and abuses against Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar

53rd session of the Human Rights Council

Statement by Nada Al-Nashif, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights

Mr President,
Distinguished Panelists,
Excellencies,

Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar have endured decades of persecution and systematic discrimination. Today, eleven years after the 2012 violence in Rakhine State, and six years after the 2017 military operations that killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, more than one million languish in refugee camps in Bangladesh. An estimated 600,000 remain in Myanmar where they continue to be deprived of their basic rights.

The Rohingya Crisis

COUNCILL ON FOREIN RELATIONS
Written By
Eleanor Albert and Lindsay Maizland
Last updated : January 23, 2020 

Rohingya refugees help each other after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority group, have fled persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, fueling a historic migration crisis. 

Introduction 

Who are the Rohingya? 

What is the legal status of the Rohingya?

Why are the Rohingya fleeing Myanmar?

What’s caused the recent exodus?

Where are the Rohingya migrating? 

Has civilian leadership changed the Myanmar government’s policies?

How is the region responding? How has the rest of the world responded? 

Recommended Resources 

 

 

The Rohingya Crisis In Myanmar: Analysing The Use Of Citizenship Status As Lawfare

Abstract: Since the 1982 Citizenship Law, the lives of Myanmar's Rohingya minority have been subjected to both symbolic, material, and physical violence. This paper seeks to analyze how the Citizenship Law can be considered an act of lawfare, that is, using the law as a weapon. Lack of citizenship can give rise to insecurity, excluding people from a community in which civil and political rights are assured and security is guaranteed. In this way, it can also legitimize violence against the minority. Thus, the Citizenship Law — and the consequent exclusion of the Rohingyas from citizenship — has been an enabler of violence. First, in the form of symbolic and material violence through the denial of civil, political, social, and economic rights; then, physical violence through ethnic cleansing attempts enacted by the Tatmadaw, which sought to transform legislative nonexistence into literal nonexistence.

Problem statement: How did the Tatmadaw government use the 1982 Citizenship Law to create insecurity and legitimize violence against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar?

Bottom-line-up-front: The 1982 Citizenship Law in Myanmar, which excluded the Rohingya minority from the ‘national races’ entitled to citizenship, was not only a cause of insecurity and vulnerability among those targeted but also a genuine act of lawfare carried out by the Tatmadaw to legitimize symbolic, material, and physical violence by marginalising and alienating the Rohingya minority through legal non-recognition.

Bangladesh Needs Concerted Support To Manage Protracted Rohingya Crisis – Analysis

Eurasia Review
By Brig Gen (Retd) Hasan Md Shamsuddin
April 10, 2023

Bangladesh is providing shelter and supporting the persecuted Rohingyas on humanitarian grounds for nearly six years. In addition, for the repatriation of the Rohingyas to Myanmar, Bangladesh government has been trying its best to resolve the crisis along with China and the international community.

The repatriation process is not yet successful because Myanmar has not come forward to resolve this issue. Bangladesh signed a repatriation deal with Myanmar in November 2017. Repatriation efforts taken in 2018 failed as the situation in Rakhine state was unsafe and Rohingyas were not interested to return in that situation. Again in 2019, an attempt was made to start the repatriation with the mediation of China but it was not also successful. As a result, no progress has been made in the issue of Rohingya repatriation in the last six years. Following China’s involvement in repatriation talks, small-scale repatriation of Rohingyas to Myanmar has been under discussion since 2020 and China has been pressuring Myanmar to expedite the repatriation.

Bangladesh seeks unity, concerted efforts from int’l community to resolve Rohingya crisis

Dhaka Tribune
UNB
Published: March 22, 2023 

Dhaka Tribune

 

 

Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen has underscored the urgent need for unity and concerted efforts from the international community to resolve the Rohingya crisis, in the true spirit of responsibility and burden sharing.

He urged the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy on Myanmar, Noeleen Heyzer, to enhance her engagements with Myanmar authorities as well as other stakeholders to improve the conditions in Rakhine so that the Rohingyas can return to their homes without delay.

Rohingya campaigners condemn Myanmar’s ‘opaque’ repatriation plan

Aljazeera
By Al Jazeera Staff
Published On 23 Mar 202323 Mar 2023

Rights campaigners call the ruling military’s pilot project to repatriate the persecuted ethnic Muslim minority a ‘PR campaign’. 

Nearly 800,000 Rohingya fled their homeland in Myanmar in 2017 after a brutal military crackdown [File: Showkat Shafi/Al Jazeera]

 

The Myanmar military’s “pilot project” to repatriate about 1,000 Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh has been met with scepticism, with rights campaigners calling it a “PR campaign”.

Last week, a delegation from Myanmar visited the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district – home to more than 1 million Rohingya – to interview potential candidates for their return as early as next month.

The Rohingya endure crisis after crisis

The Washington Post
Analysis by Ishaan Tharoor
Columnist
March 10, 2023 

Police guard the Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp. (Turjoy Chowdhury for The Washington Post)

Last weekend, a fire ripped through a stretch of one the world’s largest and most cramped refugee camps. Though no deaths were reported, the blaze incinerated more than 2,000 shelters and left more than 12,000 Rohingya people homeless, half of whom are children, according to local Bangladeshi officials. It was just the latest misery to befall a community already coping with years of dispossession, deprivation and statelessness.

‘I turned on the light and they were all dead’: Survivors recount horrors from Rohingya crisis

Frontier
MYANMAR
By OLIVER SLOW | FRONTIER
February 8, 2023 

A Rohingya refugee at a camp Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district. (Steve Tickner | Frontier)

 

In an adapted extract from his new book Return of the Junta: Why Myanmar’s military must go back to the barracks, journalist Oliver Slow reports on his September 2017 trip to the refugee camps in Bangladesh at the height of the Myanmar military’s crackdown against the Rohingya. At the time an editor with Frontier, he travelled with staff photographer Steve Tickner, and the pair documented the desperation those arriving faced, as well as the violence they had endured at the hands of the military.

At 120 kilometres in length, Cox’s Bazar is often billed as the longest beach in the world, and it’s a point of pride for many Bangladeshis, who often travel there for weekend breaks.

The Rohingya Crisis: Suu Kyi’s False Flag and Eth-nic Cleansing in Arakan By Md. Mahmudul Hasan

The Rohingya Crisis

COUNCIL on
FOREIGN
RELATIONS

WRITTEN BY
Eleanor Albert and Lindsay Maizland

Rohingya refugees help each other after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters

Summary

• For decades, Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority group, in Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country, have faced institutionalized discrimination, such as exclusionary citizenship laws.

• The Myanmar government launched a military campaign in 2017 that forced seven hundred thousand Rohingya to flee. Rights groups suspect the government has committed genocide against the Rohingya, but officials deny the accusations.

• The United States and other countries have sanctioned military officials and given aid to Rohingya refugees who have fled to nearby countries, such as Bangladesh.

How the U.S. Can Help Resolve the Rohingya Crisis

FOREIGN AFFAIRS
by Jonah Blank and Shelly Culbertson
January 5, 2018

A Rohingya refugee looks at the moon with a child in tow at Balukhali refugee camp, Bangladesh, December 3, 201Photo by Susana Vera/Reuters

Since August, an estimated 650,000 Rohingyas, out of a population of a million, have fled from Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh to escape a campaign of arson, rape, and murder believed to have been orchestrated by the Myanmar military. In late November, the government of Myanmar agreed to let these refugees return—although not to their homes, and at a pace that could drag out the process for a generation. Even if this offer was honored—and there is plenty of reason for skepticism—it would hardly be cause for celebration: Myanmar does not seem to have made any genuine commitment to address the causes of the flight, which U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has described as “ethnic cleansing.”

Justice, accountability must for Rohingya, speakers say in The Hague

Dhaka Tribune 

Tribune Desk
December 9, 2022

Courtesy

International community and States Parties of Rome Statute need to stand resolutely with Bangladesh in securing sustainable return of the Rohingya people to their homeland, Myanmar, speakers told a discussion in the city.

They underlined it at an event during the 21st (annual) Assembly of the States Parties of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague on Friday, said a press release.

The event titled “Justice for the Rohingyas and No Peace without Justice” was co-hosted by the Bangladesh Embassy to the Netherlands, the Government of Gambia.

US won’t let Rohingya become forgotten crisis: US Asst Sec

BSS
04 Dec 2022,

DHAKA, Dec 4, 2022 (BSS)-Visiting United States (US) Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration Julieta Valls Noyes today said that her country along with UN agencies would not let the Rohingya issue become a “forgotten crisis”.

“We won’t let this become a forgotten crisis,” she tweeted after holding a meeting with officials from different UN agencies including UNHCR, IOM, UNICEF, UNFPA, AFP and WHO here.

Rohingya crisis and the need for political unity

The Daily Star

Hrishik Roy, Zaheer Abbas
Mon Sep 5, 2022 

The world must collectively work towards building the capacity of the Rohingya community. PHOTO: REUTERS

Aung San Suu Kyi has been sentenced to five years of imprisonment – although this does not account for the other charges levelled against her, as well as her advanced age. It could very well be that Myanmar's erstwhile paragon of democracy and human rights will never be free again. It is a thumping victory for its military, which has for long battled to undermine democracy in the state.

Rohingya repatriation: Dhaka may seek updates on Beijing's efforts

daily sun
UNB
19th October, 2022 

Bangladesh is likely to seek an update from the Chinese side on Thursday regarding its efforts to find ways for repatriation of the Rohingya refugees to Myanmar.

Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Li Jiming is scheduled to meet Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen at his office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday morning where the Rohingya issue is likely to be raised, a senior official told UNB.

 

Rohingya repatriation: Dhaka may seek updates on Beijing's efforts

Dhaka Tribune

UNB
October 19, 2022 

Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Li Jiming is scheduled to meet Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Thursday

Bangladesh is likely to seek an update from the Chinese side on Thursday regarding its efforts to find ways for repatriation of the Rohingya refugees to Myanmar.

Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Li Jiming is scheduled to meet Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen at his office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday morning where the Rohingya issue is likely to be raised, a senior official told UNB.

Solve Rohingya crisis or it may fuel extremism

The Daily Star

UNB, New York
Sun Sep 25, 2022

Calling upon the United Nations to play an effective role in solving the Rohingya crisis, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has warned that the problem may affect the security and stability of the entire region, and beyond if it persists.

She made the call while delivering her speech in the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Friday.

Like the previous years, she addressed the UNGA in Bangla. The theme of this year's general debate is "A watershed moment: transformative solutions to interlocking challenges".

Hasina said Bangladesh last month marked five years of the 2017 Rohingya mass exodus.

International community losing interest in Rohingya crisis, Turkish FM says

AA
Merve Aydogan
ANKARA
22.09.2022

Cavusoglu urges to never give up on efforts for voluntary, sustainable return of Rohingya to Myanmar

The international community is losing interest in the plight of Rohingya, the Turkish foreign minister said on Thursday, urging the international community to do more for the minority Muslims forced to flee Myanmar five years ago.

"Rohingya Muslims have been deprived of their fundamental rights and basic needs. Unfortunately, international community is losing interest to this tragedy," said Mevlut Cavusoglu during a high-level side event on the Rohingya crisis organized by Bangladesh in New York, where the 77th UN General Assembly is ongoing.

The Rohingya Refugee Crisis: Legal Protection on International Law and Islamic Law

Around 1M Rohingya are living in Bangladesh camps, five years after crisis

TRT World Now
Aug 25, 2022

Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition talks to TRT World about the condition of nearly one million Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh camps five years after fleeing Myanmar’s brutal oppression.

Link : Here