Why is the UN’s Response to Myanmar’s Rohingya Persecution so Powerless?

THE 
GLOBE POST
Max Pensky
July 11, 2019
Opinion

 In August 2017, Myanmar’s military launched 'area clearance operations' against the Rohingya in its western Rakhine Province, driving nearly three-quarters of a million citizens into neighboring Bangladesh. Photo: AFP

Recent reports about the United Nations’ response to Myanmar’s persecution of the Rohingya minority highlights just how deep the U.N.’s dysfunction has become. U.N. officials now openly worry that ongoing aid provision to internally displaced Rohingya civilians confined to squalid camps within Myanmar will have the unintended effect of “entrenching segregation,” effectively helping Myanmar in its efforts to isolate the Rohingya.

UN warns of possible new war crimes in Myanmar

THE GURDIAN
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Thu 4 Jul 2019

Special rapporteur tells of abductions and torture of civilians by Myanmar military and insurgent group

 The UN special rapporteur to Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, said the situation in Myanmar was worsening by the day. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images

Human rights abuses that may amount to fresh war crimes are being committed against civilians in Myanmar’s restive Rakhine and Chin states, the UN has said, as the fighting between the military and rebel groups intensifies.

Speaking to the UN human rights council (UNHRC), Yanghee Lee, the UN special rapporteur on Myanmar, detailed accounts of abduction and torture of civilians by both the Myanmar army and the rebel insurgent group the Arakan Army, which is fighting for greater autonomy in the region.

“The conflict with the Arakan Army in northern Rakhine state and parts of southern Chin state has continued over the past few months and the impact on civilians is devastating,” Lee told the UNHRC on Tuesday. “Many acts of the Tatmadaw [Myanmar armed forces] and the Arakan Army violate international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes, as well as violating human rights.”

ရခိုင္မွာ စစ္တပ္နဲ႔ AA တို႔ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ိဳးေဖါက္ ေၾကာင္း ယန္ဟီးလီ ေျပာ

RFA 

လြတ္လပ္တဲ့ အာရွအသံ

02.07.2019

■ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္မွာ ျမန္မာစစ္တပ္နဲ႔ AA တပ္ဖြဲ႕ ႏွစ္ဖက္လံုးက အရပ္သားျပည္သူေတြအေပၚ လူ႔အခြင့္အေ ရး ခ်ိဳးေဖါက္မႈေတြ က်ဴးလြန္ခဲ့ၾကတယ္လို႔ ကုလသမဂၢရဲ႕ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဆိုင္ရာ လြတ္လပ္တဲ့ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ကၽြမ္းက်င္သူ ယန္ဟီးလီ က ေျပာပါတယ္။

ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့လေတြအတြင္း ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ေျမာက္ပိုင္းနဲ႔ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္ ေတာင္ပိုင္းမွာ စစ္ေရးပဋိပကၡေတြ ဆက္ လက္ေပၚေပါက္ခဲ့တဲ့အတြက္၊ ေဒသခံျပည္သူေတြအေပၚ ဆိုးက်ိဳးသက္ေရာက္မႈေတြရွိခဲ့ေၾကာင္း၊ ႏွစ္ဖက္ တပ္ေတြဟာ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးနဲ႔ လူသားခ်င္းစာနာေရး ဥပေဒေတြ ခ်ိဳးေဖါက္ခဲ့ၾကသလို၊ စစ္ရာ ဇ၀တ္မႈေတြ က်ဴးလြန္ခဲ့ၾကေၾကာင္း အဂၤါေန႔က ေျပာၾကားခဲ့ပါတယ္။


ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ သီတင္းပတ္ကလည္း ရခိုင္နဲ႔ ခ်င္းမွာ အင္တာနက္ မိုဘိုင္းဖုန္းဆက္သြယ္ေရးကို စစ္တပ္က ပိတ္ လိုက္တဲ့ကိစၥအေပၚ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးခ်ိဳးေဖါက္မႈအျဖစ္ ကုလသမဂၢမွာ ေျပာဆိုခဲ့သလို၊ AA ကလည္း ပလက္ ၀ၿမိဳ႕က ေဆာက္လုပ္ေရးအလုပ္သမား ၁၂ ဦးနဲ႔ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္နယ္စပ္အနီးက ရြာသူရြာသား ၅၂ ဦး အပါအ ၀င္ အရပ္သားေတြကို ျပန္ေပးဆြဲခဲ့ေၾကာင္းလည္း ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ပါတယ္။

Photo: Yanghee Lee's Twitter
RFA Burmese Face Book

Why the UN failed to save the Rohingya

Al Jazeera
by Joshua Carroll

28 Jun 2019

Insiders say UN sought to downplay criticism of Myanmar and was hamstrung by China, Russia opposition to firm response.

A Rohingya refugee and her children wade ashore after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border by boat in September 2017 [File: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]

Yangon, Myanmar - When Liam Mahony travelled to Myanmar to advise the United Nations on its handling of the Rohingya crisis, the dozens of aid workers he spoke to were almost unanimous in their appraisal of the organisation's approach.

Their view, the researcher recalls, was "this was all screwed up... this was not going to help the Rohingya population".

Bangladesh highlights UN’s failure to prevent atrocities in Myanmar

The Daily Star
June 29, 2019

A Rohingya refugee repairs the roof of his shelter at the Balukhali refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, March 5, 2019. Reuters file photo

The Permanent Representative (PR) of Bangladesh Ambassador Masud Bin Momen has highlighted the UN's systematic failure to prevent atrocities in Rakhaine state of Myanmar.

He referred to the recent report on 'Independent inquiry into the involvement of the UN in Myanmar from 2010 to 2018' of Gert Rosenthal, the former Guatemalan Foreign Affairs Minister.

UN warns of telecom blackout cover for Myanmar military abuses

Aljazeera
25 Jun 2019

Blackout in parts of Rakhine and Chin states imposed amid reports of escalating military offensive against Arakan Army.

The UN Special Rapporteur says the military is stepping up operations against ethnic Buddhist rebels in Rakhine state [FILE/Ann Wang/Reuters]

Myanmar's army may be committing serious human rights violations under cover of a mobile phone blackout in parts of Rakhine and Chin states in the west of the country, Yanghee Lee, UN special rapporteur on Myanmar, said on Monday.

Rohingya group wants UN secretary general to resign over Myanmar 'failure'

IOL
19 June 2019, 
Jacob Goldberg

Rohingya refugees look out from their camp near a fence during a government-organized media tour to a no-mans land between Myanmar and Bangladesh, near Taungpyolatyar village, Maung Daw, northern Rakhine State, Myanmar. File picture: Min Kyi Thein/AP

Yangon - A Rohingya advocacy group on Wednesday called for the resignation of United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres after a UN inquiry found "systemic failure" in its own conduct in Myanmar. 

UN warns of aid cut over Rohingya camp closures

THE ASEAN POST
19 June 2019

Myanmar police escort journalists during a government organized visit to Rohingya Muslims confined at Thet Kae Pyin camp in Rakhine state as they celebrate Eid al-Adha on 22 August, 2018. (Phyo Hein Kyaw / AFP Photo)

 

The United Nations (UN) has warned it will pare back aid to thousands of Rohingya Muslims left destitute as Myanmar's government closes camps in Rakhine state, over fears its continued support "risks entrenching segregation".

ကုလမှာ တိကျတဲ့ မူမရှိလို့ ရခိုင်အရေး ထိရောက် အောင် မကူညီနိုင်ခဲ့

B B C
ဘီဘီစီ မြန်မာပိုင်း
18 ဇွန် 2019

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ အခြေစိုက် ကုလသမဂ္ဂ အဖွဲ့အစည်းတွေရဲ့ လုပ်ပုံကိုင်ပုံ နည်းနာတွေ မှားယွင်းခဲ့တယ်၊ ဖွဲ့စည်း မှု စနစ် ယန္တရားအရကို အပြစ် အနာအဆာတွေ ရှိနေတယ်လို့ ဝေဖန်ထားတဲ့ အစီရင်ခံစာ တစ်စောင်ဇွန်လ ၁၇ ရက်နေ့ ရက်စွဲနဲ့ ထွက်လာပါတယ်။

ဒီ အစီရင်ခံစာကို ကုလသမဂ္ဂရဲ့ ထိပ်တန်း တာဝန်တွေ ထမ်းဆောင်ခဲ့ဖူးတဲ့ ဂွာတီမာလာ ဝါရင့် သံတမန် ဂတ်(ထ) ရိုဇင်ထဲလ် Gert Rosenthal က ရေးသားတာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

UN News

17 June 2019

UN Affairs

UN chief accepts independent report on Myanmar, highlighting ‘systemic’ failure surrounding Rohingya crisis

Rohingya refugees cross the border near Anzuman Para village, Palong Khali, Bangladesh. 9 October 2017.

An independent review into how the UN System operated in Myanmar in the years leading up to the mass exodus of the Rohingya following serious human rights abuses, has concluded there were “systemic and structural failures” that prevented a unified strategy from being implemented.

လူမ်ိဳးေရးခြဲျခားဆက္ဆံမႈေတြမလုပ္ဖို႔ ျမန္မာအစိုးရကို UN သတိေပး

RFA 

လြတ္လပ္တဲ့ အာရွအသံ
2019-06-17

ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္၊ စစ္ေတြၿမိဳ႕က မြတ္စလင္ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းတစ္ခုကို ေတြ႔ရစဥ္

Photo: Min Thein Aung/ RFA

႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာ မြတ္စလင္ေတြအေပၚ ခြဲျခားဆက္ဆံတဲ့ ျမန္မာအစိုးရမူဝါဒေၾကာင့္ ပါဝင္ပတ္သက္မႈ မျဖစ္ေစဖုိ႔ ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္က ဒုကၡသည္ေတြကို ကူညီပံ့ပိုးမႈ ရပ္ဆိုင္းထားမယ္လို႔ ကုလသမဂၢက ျမန္မာအစုိးရကုိ သ တိေပးေျပာၾကားလုိက္ပါတယ္။

UN report condemns its conduct in Myanmar as systemic failure

The Guardian
Mon 17 Jun 2019

Exclusive: ‘Serious errors’ found in agencies’ approach to Rohingya crisis in Rakhine

 A displaced Rohingya woman and her children at a temporary camp in Rakhine state in December 2018. Photograph: Nyunt Win/EPA 

A damning report by the UN on its own conduct in Myanmar has condemned the organisation’s “obviously dysfunctional performance” over the past decade and concluded there was a systemic failure.

The report, seen by the Guardian before publication, was commissioned by the secretary general, António Guterres, after accusations that the UN system ignored warning signs of escalating violence before an alleged genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority.

Bangladesh informs UN of Myanmar's non-cooperation on Rohingya repatriation

The Daily Star
June 13, 2019

                                          UN chief concerned over repatriation delay

 

State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam shakes hands with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres at a bilateral meeting on Rohingya issue and the celebration of birth centenary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in New York in USA on June 11, 2019. Photo: Courtesy

Bangladesh has shared the existing problems regarding the Rohingya issue with the UN and informed it about Myanmar's non-cooperation in starting the repatriation.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam conveyed these to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres at a bilateral meeting on Rohingya issue and the celebration of birth centenary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in New York.

UN member states urged to play effective role over Rohingya issue

The Daily Star
Star Online Report
June 12, 2019

 Bangladesh has urged the UN member states to play an effective role for a permanent solution to the Rohingya crisis and promote an effective migration governance to ensure safe and orderly migration.

The call was made at an Eid reunion organised by the Bangladesh’s Permanent Mission to the UN in New York on Tuesday attended by permanent representatives and diplomats of more than 100 countries including India, Japan, Russia, China, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

U.N. pushes Myanmar over Rohingya

The Japan News

May 26, 2019

AFP-Jiji

YANGON (AFP-Jiji) — Myanmar must “show results” to convince Rohingya refugees to return, the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Friday at the end of his first visit to Myanmar since the crackdown against Rohingya Muslims in 2017.

A brutal military campaign in western Rakhine State forced some 740,000 Rohingya over the border into Bangladesh.

ဘေးအ္တရာယ်ဆိုင်ရာ စီမံခန့်ခွဲမှုဦးစီးဌာနနှင့် ကုလသ မဂ္ဂ ဒုက္ခသည်များဆိုင်ရာ မဟာမင်းကြီးရုံးတို့အကြား နားလည်မှုစာချွန်လွှာ လက်မှတ်ရေးထိုး

မြန်မာ့အလင်း
နေပြည်တော် မေ ၂၃

 လူမှုဝန်ထမ်း၊ ကယ်ဆယ်ရေးနှင့်ပြန်လည် နေရာချထားရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာန ဘေးအန္တရာယ် ဆိုင်ရာစီမံခန့်ခွဲမှု ဦးစီး ဌာနနှင့် ကုလသမဂ္ဂဒုက္ခသည်များဆိုင်ရာ မဟာ မင်းကြီးရုံး (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees- UNHCR) တို့အကြား နားလည်မှု စာချွန်လွှာ(MoU) လက်မှတ်ရေးထိုးပွဲ အခမ်းအနားကို ယနေ့မွန်းလွဲပိုင်းတွင် အဆိုပါဝန်ကြီးရုံးအစည်းအဝေး ခန်းမ၌ ကျင်းပသည်။

UN Fact-Finding Mission Recommends Suspension of International Dealings with Myanmar’s Military

RFA
2019-05-14

United Nations' Independent International Fact-finding Mission on Myanmar chairperson Marzuki Darusman presents the final report on alleged rights violations during a press conference on August 27, 2018 in Geneva.  

 

The government of Myanmar has again rejected U.N. calls for accountability in its handling of the ongoing Rohingya crisis after a statement by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on Myanmar Tuesday urged the international community to cut off financial aid to Myanmar’s military.

Myanmar troops kill six in Rakhine for suspected rebel links.

Aljazeera

3rd May 2019

Soldiers opened fire as a clash erupted with the detained villagers, according to member of parliament.

More recently, civilians have been caught up in clashes between the military and the Arakan Army [File:Min Kyi Thein/AP Photo]

Myanmar security forces have shot dead at least six people in the troubled western state of Rakhine after soldiers and police detained hundreds of people at a school, a military spokesperson said.

News analysis: Is the UN doing enough for Rohingyas?

Dhaka Tribune
Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan 
Published at  April 30th, 2019

A group of Rohingya refugee people filling jars with water Dhaka Tribune

Several delegates have visited the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar since the crisis began in August 2017, with no visible outcome

The United Nations keeps on failing the Rohingyas, one of the most persecuted communities in the world, by not taking any concrete measures to compel Myanmar to take its people back to their homeland in Rakhine.

'Do not forget the Rohingya': UN urges support for refugees

Aljazeera 
28 April, 2019


Top UN officials call for generosity from world to help Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh camps.

Bangladesh wants to move 100,000 of the Rohingya refugees sheltered in camps to a cyclone-prone island [Dar Yasin/AP]

Top United Nations officials have urged the international community not to forget the plight of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and called for global support to ensure their safe and voluntary return to Myanmar.