MIGRATION FLUXES IN THE ROHINGYA REFUGEE CRISIS

Most of the Rohingya refugees fled to Bangladesh, where they stay in refugee camps. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 950.000 Rohingyas stay in Bangladesh, a country without the necessary amount of resources or lanIn order to analyze the history of the conflict and its geopolitical contexts, we have to make a little explanation on who are the Rohingyas and what are their origins. The Rohingyas are a small muslim minority in Myanmar that resides in the Rakhine State. They have a different culture than the Buddhist majority of Myanmar, they also differ on the language and the religion. Their origins go back to the fifteenth century, when thousands of Muslims migrated to the region. Some of them arrived during migration flows in the nineteenth and twentieth century, when Burma (known as Myanmar since 1989) was still a great Britain colony. With the independence of the former colony in 1948, several governments of Myanmar have denied their claims to be recognised as one of the 135 ethnicities that form the country.

Even though most of them have had roots in Myanmar for centuries, nowadays they are still widely considered immigrants from Bangladesh and not citizens of the country. In fact, the government of Myanmar refuses to give them the status of citizens, so the majority of Rohingyas does not have any documentation to identify them, making them a stateless nation. Until recently the Rohingyas were able to access to “white cards”, an identification card that gives them the status of “temporary residents”. The government started to issue those cards in the 1990s to the muslim population in Myanmar, rohingyas and no-rohingyas. In 2014 the Myanmar government conducted a census in which they aimed to include all the inhabitants, but since the buddhist majority threatened to boycott the census if the Rohingyas were included as Rohingyas, the government bared with it and decided that they could only be included as Bengali. In 2015 the white cards mentioned before were revoked after the buddhist majority protested about the Rohingyas right to vote. 

“The Myanmar government has effectively institutionalized discrimination against the ethnic group through restrictions on marriage, family planning, employment, education, religious choice, and freedom of movement” (Council on Foreign Relations, 2018). That means that the Rohingyas need to have permission from the government to do the most common things such as getting married and that they might even have to bribe officials to do so. Also, they are obligated by law to not have more than two children.

In August of 2017, a militar Rohingya group known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) declared themselves as the responsible ones for an attack to different police and army stations in the Rakhine State. ARSA was declared a terrorist group by the Myanmar government and the army launched a strong attack to hundreds of Rohingya villages forcing thousands of Rohingyas to abandon their homes and leave Myanmar. According to Doctors Without Borders, around six thousand seven hundred Rohingyas were killed on the first month of the attacks (August 25 to September 24 of 2017). Although the Myanmar government claimed that the operations against Rohingyas ended on September 5, there is evidence that the attacks continued after the order was made. 

Most of the Rohingya refugees fled to Bangladesh, where they stay in refugee camps. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 950.000 Rohingyas stay in Bangladesh, a country without the necessary amount of resources or landfill to  accommodate all that people. They live in a constant danger of outbreaks of diseases due to the poor facilities, the bad access to potable water… The number of refugees increases if we take into account the ones in Malaysia, Indonesia or Thailand and also the ones that are in those countries unregistered. According to the UN, the Rohingya’s crisis is the “world's fastest growing refugee crisis”.

This conflict has and is having really important repercussions in a local and global level. As we have seen before, this conflict has had important repercussions on a local level such as terrorist attacks and the discrimination, persecution and killing of thousands of people. Since August 2017 some 700.000 people have fled to Bangladesh, some of whom explained to British U.N. Ambassador Karen Pierce on a visit in April 2018, the horrible things they and their families had to endure such as raping and killing.

The entire region that consists of Western Myanmar, Northeastern India and Bangladesh’s eastern borders is a border area for two of the BRICS nations, China and India, predicted to constitute the coming multipolar world order, makes it of high importance. We must not forget that this area is an unstable mix of ethnic insurgencies and communal tension and so the appearance of one conflict may create a domino effect. The Rohingya crisis is affecting Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand directly too as countries that have accepted refugees escaping the conflict. Another important point is that Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia and Thailand are all members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is considered to be one of the most successful regional organizations and an economic powerhouse in the near future. The weak response from the organization to the crisis weakes the organization itself as it probes its incompetence when facing and resolving a humanitarian and political issue within the members of the organization.

It is important to remind that apart from the political and economic sphera, this is a humanitarian crisis with hundreds of thousands of people that have been killed, are missing or have to live in horrible conditions as temporarily refugees of whom no-one wants to take responsibility for.

Although it is a regional conflict, the international community has been following the situation in Myanmar with increasing concern and some international organisations have elaborated statements or taken sides in the conflict.

United Nations: in a statement made the 16th of October 2017, the UN made a joint statement on the Rohingya refugee crisis. In the statement they praise Bangladesh and its local communities for their support to refugees and their solidarity. They make very clear that the origin of the conflict is Myanmar, therefore, they are the responsibles to find a solution assuring that the migration flux stops and refugees can go back to Myanmar in safe conditions. They also demand that the international community “intensifies efforts to bring a peaceful solution to the plight of the Rohingya” (UNHCR, 2017), as well as reminding that they reqcuire the necessary funds to accomplish their Joint Response Plan to meet the needs of the 1.2 million refugees and their host communities. 

ASEAN: The Association of Souteast Asian Nations has a strong principle of no interference in internal affairs of the member states, thus no action has been made or no statement. However, some members of the ASEAN Charter have spoken condemning the treatment of the Rohingyas by the state of Myanmar. The Prime Minister of Malaysia “told a rally in Kuala Lumpur in 2016 that the “world cannot sit by and watch genocide taking place”” (Shivakoti, 2017).

Doctors Without Borders: the international organization has provided medical aid to the Rohingyas for decades, but with the recent crisis the aid has augmented. They have established facilities in Bangladesh to provide refuge to the Rohingyas as well as medical care and other types of humanitarian help.

As a conclusion, there is only left to say that the Rohingyas face all the definitions of region, border and sovereignty. They are people who belong to nowhere and that are not wanted anywhere. In Myanmar they are treated as scum and strongly repressed. Outside Myanmar, when accepted, they are treated under the label of “temporarily refugees” and have to deal again with horrible life conditions and discrimination. They have no place to live and no actual sovereignty over their lives and future. When talking about diplomacy, once again, we are talking about a complete failure. The little talks about the matter have not ended in any tangible solution for the Rohingya people. The different countries just limited to say that it was not their problem or their fault and so had no responsibility on finding a solution. Later last month, the UN Security Council showed their concerns about the matter and paid a visit to the refugees camp. It still has to be seen if this translates into tangible measures and if those are fit enough for.

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