Humanitarian Crises

In March at the Carter Center in Atlanta, South Sudan’s minister of health announced that Guinea worm transmission had been stopped within South Sudan. It has been fifteen months since the last reported case, and the disease has a life cycle of twelve months. That means the disease is gone from South Sudan, though it could be reintroduced from elsewhere. The World Health Organization is expected to certify South Sudan as free of Guinea worm. Elimination of Guinea worm is a massive, even spectacular, achievement orchestrated by an American non-governmental organization, the Carter Center, working with African ministries of health, numerous local partners, and a veritable army of village volunteers. In 2016, there were twenty-five reported cases of Guinea worm in the world, in South Sudan, Mali, Chad, and Ethiopia, but now, the disease is found only in the last three. Those three countries have a better health infrastructure than South Sudan, with its ongoing civil war and massive displacement of population. Hence, if the disease can be eliminated in South Sudan, it is likely soon to be entirely eliminated from the face of the earth. That would make it the second human disease after smallpox to be eliminated. It is to be hoped that polio will be the third. When the Carter Center began its campaign in 1986, there were an estimated 3.5 million cases worldwide. Present in ancient Egypt and mentioned in the Old Testament, Guinea worm is (or was) a scourge of the poor. It is a parasite, the larvae of which are transmitted in water. After the larvae is ingested by a human body, a three-foot worm develops. The worm then makes its way out of the body through a sore, often on a foot, by excreting an acid. Guinea worm itself is not fatal, but it is excruciatingly painful, debilitating, and increases vulnerability to other diseases. There is no cure for the disease. Modern treatment is the same as it was for the ancient Egyptians: the emerging worm is carefully wrapped around a stick to prevent infection. Guinea worm can be prevented through the filtering of water. That requires a public education campaign. The Carter Center had the imagination to take as its focus a disgusting but non-fatal disease that almost exclusively plagues the poor. With its campaign against Guinea worm, it might be argued that the Carter Center has done more than most official assistance programs to mitigate the lives of the African poor. A UN publication announcing the end of Guinea worm in South Sudan noted that former president Jimmy Carter, the founder of the Carter Center, announced in 2015 that he had been diagnosed with cancer: “He said he was responding well to treatment and he expected to outlive the last case of Guinea worm. President Carter is now 95 and cancer free, and Guinea worm disease just lost the fight in South Sudan.”   

Slavery, long banned and universally condemned, persists in many corners of the world, victimizing tens of millions of people.

Slavery, long banned and universally condemned, persists in many corners of the world, victimizing tens of millions of people.

The past year saw the ongoing historic displacement of millions from conflict and persecution, and a weak response from the world’s richest nations to address the problems.

Internally displaced persons (IDPs) are those forced to leave their homes but who do not cross international borders. As a practical matter, they are largely devoid of the protections accorded by international law and UN agencies to refugees—persons with a well-founded fear of persecution based on ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, and other criteria that is defined by international protocols. IDPs by contrast, are the responsibility of the country in which they reside and hold citizenship. In poor countries, the material conditions of IDP’s may be worse than refugees, who are eligible for international assistance. In 2012, member states of the African Union signed the Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (IDMC). This is the world’s only protocol that binds governments legally to protect the rights and well-being of IDPs. However, because of a lack of state capacity, persistent internal conflict, and poverty, too often this protocol remains only aspirational.  Due to the fact that IDPs do not cross international borders and are often found in remote areas, their numbers are difficult to determine. Perhaps the best, readily available source are the reports of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). The organizations concluded that at the end of 2016, there were 12.6 million African IDPs. They have just released a new report on the plight of IDPs in Africa. The new report concludes that in the first six months of 2017, an additional 2.7 million people have been internally displaced. Of those, almost half are in two countries: just under one million people became internally displaced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and just over two hundred thousand in the Central African Republic. These figures represent significant increases from recent years. Most of the time, internal displacement is not the result of natural disasters. The IDMC and the NRC conclude that conflicts caused 75 percent of new displacements so far in 2017, up from 70 percent in 2016. The primary driver of internal displacement is politics in the context of poor governance. The Norwegian Refugee Council established the IDMC in 1998. Its headquarters is in Geneva. It is funded mostly by the Scandinavian states, the United Kingdom, the United States (through USAID), Australia, and various international agencies and non-governmental organizations. Its data is the gold standard when it comes to studying IDPs.  

By now the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine State has resulted in more than 625,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing into Bangladesh just since August 25. Last week, I wrote about Pope Francis’s visit to Bangladesh, and his public interaction with eighteen Rohingya refugees, which helped focus attention on their plight, if briefly. This week I want to provide a sense of how challenging the state of affairs is for the Rohingya refugees. Bangladesh has opened its border to them, and they at least have a literal place of refuge. But the scale of the influx in such a compressed period of time has overwhelmed relief agencies. As of December 3, the Inter Sector Coordination Group reports that with the new influx of refugees since August, the total number of Rohingya refugees now in Bangladesh is more than 838,000. Crowding and poor sanitation create the perfect storm for waterborne disease outbreaks. Reuters reported contamination of 60 percent of the camps’ water supply. The head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told Agence France-Presse in November that the risk of cholera was a “ticking bomb.” To prevent the worst, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) began a mass cholera immunization drive in October, targeting some 900,000 people. The UNICEF representative in Bangladesh called it the “second largest largest oral vaccination campaign in the world after Haiti in 2016.” The WHO indicates that the available oral cholera vaccines can provide around 65 percent protection—clearly helpful, but not an impenetrable shield. Just three weeks back, the World Food Program warned of “high malnutrition rates among Rohingya refugees.” Its news release stated that “one in four Rohingya children” are malnourished. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), in a November call to action, expressed concern that another influx of Rohingya “new arrivals” could be coming, which would push the total to more than 1 million refugees in Bangladesh. (This is already one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with more than 160 million people packed into an area roughly the size of Iowa.) The IRC termed the present situation an “unimaginable humanitarian crisis.” On top of all this, the refugees, who fled Rakhine State to escape brutal violence, remain vulnerable in the refugee camps. The International Organization for Migration has warned of “human trafficking, labor exploitation, and sexual abuse.” Children separated from their families are particularly at risk. Reports of child labor and forced child marriages are emerging. So are reports of sex trafficking and sexual slavery. Against this backdrop of human suffering, the funds needed to continue providing nutrition, better sanitation and housing, and continued health care and vigilance against infectious disease—not to mention ongoing protection and education for children—remain utterly inadequate. To date, the fundraising appeal remains just under 35 percent of its goal of $434 million.  No wonder the IRC called this the “world’s fastest growing humanitarian crisis.”  My book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, will be out in January. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa. Or like me on Facebook (fb.me/ayresalyssa) or Instagram (instagr.am/ayresalyssa).

Averting famine will require Saudi Arabia to permit the resumption of commercial shipping of food and fuel to the besieged country.

The Bangladesh press highlighted yesterday that Myanmar once again has declared willingness to repatriate Rohingya refugees who have fled to Bangladesh—after a “verification” process. According to the Daily Star, the verification should be “in accordance to Joint Statement of April 1992,” a statement issued by the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar concerning procedures for Rohingya refugees to return to Myanmar in the 1990s. (As I wrote earlier, the exodus of Rohingya from Rakhine State during September is one more chapter in a long-running tragedy.) A copy of the original Joint Statement is available via the Forced Migration Online digital library. The central problem with the Joint Statement can be easily seen on item iv on page four, which states that Myanmar will be willing to: …repatriate in batches all persons inter-alia: carrying Myanmar Citizenship Identity Cards/National Registration Cards; those able to present any other documents issued by relevant Myanmar authorities and; all those persons able to furnish evidence of their residence in Myanmar, such as addresses or any other relevant particulars. As countless press reports illustrate, the more than 500,000 Rohingya who have fled violence in Myanmar to safety in Bangladesh over the past month—carrying whatever little they could—in all likelihood do not possess extensive formal documents. Indeed, the Daily Star goes on to note that, “If any refugee is stripped of documents prior to crossing over, as is the case common to majority of the 507,000 refugees, he or she will lose eligibility to return back to Myanmar.” Reuters, reporting from Cox’s Bazar, found Rohingya refugees “skeptical” about ever returning home. One interviewee explained, “I don’t believe the government. Every time the government agrees we can go back, then we’re there and they break their promise.” As I noted on September 20, it is true that in the late 1990s a repatriation of Rohingya refugees occurred. But thousands of Rohingya have remained officially in refugee camps and unofficially in makeshift settlements in Bangladesh. Another wave of refugees in 2012 raised the issue again, as more Rohingya escaped violence into stressed Bangladesh without any clear future. In 2014, Human Rights Watch and others raised concerns about the Myanmar government’s process for “citizenship assessment” of the Rohingya. The census carried out by the Myanmar government in 2014 did not allow Rohingya to identify themselves as Rohingya. Denied citizenship in Myanmar, chased out by violence that UN representatives have termed “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and that “may amount to crimes against humanity,” and with Bangladesh overwhelmed and unwilling to offer a pathway to permanent residency, the next question central to this humanitarian crisis will be how to find a future for the refugees. Where will they go? Bangladeshi authorities have developed a plan to resettle some Rohingya on an island in the Bay of Bengal. The island, named Thengar Char or Bhasan Char, is subject to regular flooding, the vagaries of monsoons, and unclear effects of climate change. It’s hardly a viable solution for hundreds of thousands of the world’s most vulnerable people. And it’s worth noting as well that over in India, a case before the Supreme Court concerns whether 40,000 Rohingya refugees already in India should be deported. The Indian government has said they are “illegals” and should return to Myanmar. That the Donald J. Trump administration proposes to cut by around half the number of refugees the United States will accept does not help, and sets a poor example at a time when the question of refugee resettlement has become a global humanitarian emergency. For the moment, Bangladesh should not have to bear the burden of this crisis without greater support. The United Nations issued an urgent fundraising appeal yesterday for a Humanitarian Response Plan, for an overarching amount of $434 million to cover shelter, food, relief sites, water and sanitation, health, education, logistics, and other emergency operations through February 2018. The amount reflects efforts underway by several UN agencies as well as national and international relief organizations working in Bangladesh. Bangladesh needs the help. The Myanmar government’s signals about allowing “verified” Rohingya to return to their homes seem unlikely to help more than a few refugees, based on recent patterns. It will take concerted political negotiation after the emergency phase ends to resolve the question of what comes next for the Rohingya. But don’t hold your breath for a solution from Myanmar. My book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, will be out in January. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa. Or like me on Facebook (fb.me/ayresalyssa) or Instagram (instagr.am/ayresalyssa).

At the UN Security Council yesterday, both the UN Secretary-General and a number of UNSC members called for tough pressure on the Myanmar government, as the crisis in Rakhine State—and the exodus of refugees into Bangladesh—continues with little let up. U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Nikki Haley called for all countries to stop providing weapons to the Myanmar military, according to reports in Reuters. She said, “Any country that is currently providing weapons to the Burmese military should suspend these activities until sufficient accountability measures are in place” to ensure that the ethnic cleansing stops and commanders who oversaw the Rakhine operation are removed from their posts. This is a commendable stance, and may be an important step to convincing the Myanmar armed forces that they could pay for their ethnic cleansing operations. Meanwhile, during the discussion on Myanmar, Security Council members repeatedly mentioned commander in chief Min Aung Hlaing, who runs the Myanmar armed forces. He, even more than any other figure in Myanmar, is ultimately responsible for the army’s actions in Rakhine State. Yet his name has been barely mentioned in the international press as the crisis in Rakhine has escalated. (I will hopefully have two more pieces on Min Aung Hlaing next week, in The National and The Atlantic.) Although Aung San Suu Kyi certainly bears a significant part of the blame for the Rakhine crisis, Min Aung Hlaing needs to be front and center in discussions of Myanmar at the United Nations. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also has taken an increasingly tough rhetorical approach toward the Myanmar government. He seems to be getting increasingly frustrated with Myanmar’s stonewalling on letting in UN rights investigators, and Naypyidaw’s refusal to even acknowledge that there are serious rights violations going on in Myanmar. The Secretary-General has forcefully called on Myanmar to allow in UN investigators and to halt the army’s actions in Rakhine State. This week he called the Rohingya crisis “the world’s fastest developing refugee emergency and a humanitarian and human rights nightmare.” But the UN’s actions, though welcome, are more than a bit late. Although the crisis has grown exponentially since August, Rakhine state has been wracked with violence for nearly five years. For five years, the military and vigilantes have laid waste to parts of the state. And for five years there have been massive refugee flights into Bangladesh, as well as large numbers of internally displaced people inside Myanmar. Indeed, multiple reports, including by the BBC, have shown that the UN mostly avoiding taking serious action on the Rakhine crisis over the past five years. The BBC reports that, until the crisis that began this past August, “the head of the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) [for Myanmar], a Canadian: tried to stop human rights activists travelling to Rohingya areas attempted to shut down public advocacy on the subject isolated staff who tried to warn that ethnic cleansing might be on the way.” The United Nations has “strongly disagreed” with the BBC report. Other reports back up the BBC reporting on the UN’s go-slow approach to Rakhine. Last year, Vice obtained leaked documents which showed that “UN officials on the ground [in Myanmar] disregarded multiple recommendations on the rights and security of the [Rohingya].” The Vice documents further showed that an internal UN report had noted that the United Nations was focused mostly on “emphasizing development investment [in Rakhine State and Myanmar generally] as the solution to the problems in Rakhine State.” Although Rakhine certainly could use development, investment and growth is hardly going to stop an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. What’s more, as some of the Vice documents showed, many UN officials accurately recognized that development in Rakhine State actually might be further fueling the conflict. Finally, the Vice documents noted that the United Nations’ coordinator in Myanmar had repeatedly “discarded or simply ignored information that underscored the seriousness of the [human rights] situation” in Rakhine state. So, the United Nations’ actions this week on Myanmar are to be acclaimed. But they should have come much sooner.

Puerto Rico faced immense challenges even before the devastation from Hurricane Maria. Its economy is 15 percent smaller now than it was ten years ago, and the latest high frequency indicators from the (bankrupt) Government Development Bank indicate the economy was falling by about 2 percent a year going into September. About 10 percent of Puerto Rico’s population has left in the last ten years—and the pace of outmigration has picked up recently, with about 2 percent of the population leaving in recent years. Its pension system had been paying benefits by selling assets, and it basically has no more assets to sell. Its medical system was running off a grant from the Affordable Care Act, and that too is about to run out. Serious fiscal austerity was about to start. And now Puerto Rico appears on the edge of an acute humanitarian catastrophe. The electrical grid is down, and expected to remain down for some time. Without electricity, many critical services are hard to provide. Providing enough fuel access to run the secondary generators in all of the hospitals is a major challenge. The water utility needs electricity to run its pumps and waste water treatment facilities. Clean water is short in some places. Food too. And no doubt there are many other acute problems that need to be solved to keep the current humanitarian crisis from becoming a full-on catastrophe. Puerto Rico's future finances aren't the most pressing problem to address right now. But the discussion about how Maria will impact Puerto Rico’s economy and finances clearly has started, and I wanted to make four initial observations: There is no way Puerto Rico can pay its debts right now. And thankfully, Puerto Rico already had a framework (as a result of PROMESA) that provides Puerto Rico with protection from creditor litigation while it struggles to recover. Most of the major Puerto Rican public entities were effectively operating under Chapter 9 style bankruptcy protection (title III of PROMESA) before Maria. I would not be surprised if the water authority also seeks protection now. With the approval of the oversight board, Puerto Rico can zero out debt service for the next few years and divert all available cash to cover its critical short-term needs. And over time PROMESA’s court supervised restructuring process should allow Puerto Rico to reduce its legacy debts significantly; the bonds generally thought to have the best legal claim on Puerto Rico now trade at around fifty cents on the dollar. Puerto Rico’s humanitarian crisis is likely to quickly turn into a budget crisis. Sales tax collections will disappear for several months. Income tax collections will be way down. Tourism over the winter will fall, along with associated revenues. Even with the FEMA waiver of cost-sharing on emergency help, Puerto Rico looks to be facing a budget hole thanks to lost tax revenues. (A super technical point, but the mechanics of the sales tax pledge on the sales tax-backed [COFINA] bonds matter; the oversight board is seeking to adjust the COFINA pledge, which would help).*  Obviously, there is tremendous uncertainty right now, but I would bet the budget hole is larger than what can be covered by zeroing out projected debt service this year and next in the current fiscal plan (debt service is $400 million this year, $560 million next year, and around $700 million in FY 2020) and drawing on any budget reserve. Cutting the budget further in response to falling revenues would only add to the economic devastation. There should be a mix of emergency federal funds and/or the use of the PROMESA provisions that effectively allow the board to authorize debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing (the board can prioritize payments on new debt) to cover any immediate shortfall in tax revenues. Pulling forward future revenue to cover the current hole though will require further adjustments to the fiscal plan, as it obviously creates a fiscal shortfall later. I suspect the Oversight Board—which already has authorized the Governor to shift a billion dollars across agencies to meet emergency needs—understands this.  Federal reconstruction funds will help Puerto Rico to rebuild a portion of its public infrastructure. But that alone won’t be enough to assure long-term recovery. Puerto Rico will struggle I suspect to meet the requirement for a local match on new infrastructure investments to build long-term resilience (unless the requirement is waived).** And private businesses also need to decide to rebuild rather than relocate. I worry that the multinational companies that are the mainstay of Puerto Rico's pharmaceutical sector will migrate to other tax-favored jurisdictions: Ireland offers comparable tax advantages these days, and less hurricane risk.*** And I worry that many Puerto Ricans will decide that the time has come to migrate to Florida, to New York, or to a less traditional destination. That will further reduce Puerto Rico’s long-run economic potential. The provision of emergency help to Puerto Rico should not be controversial (even if the disaster relief fund has funds left over from Harvey and Irma, there will need to be another appropriation soon). There also needs to be a discussion of how the federal government’s current fiscal bargain with Puerto Rico needs to change. Right now low income Puerto Ricans with children are effectively disadvantaged by the tax system if they work in Puerto Rico rather than in Florida (or any of the 50 states), as Puerto Rican workers do not qualify for the earned income tax credit (EITC). And right now the Medicaid funding formula provides Puerto Rico with less support than it would get if it were a state, though care should be taken to assure that new Medicaid funds go to improving access to healthcare in Puerto Rico—not to bondholders.**** Addressing such discrepancies seems like low-hanging fruit and the budget cost is actually very modest (nothing at all compared to the cost of many tax changes now under discussion). Remember that Puerto Ricans can already access these federal funds if they migrate off island, but then their work won’t support the reconstruction of Puerto Rico. No doubt there are other ideas too—ideas that would go beyond providing low income Puerto Ricans equal access to federal funding and that would move toward providing special incentives to encourage investment and industry.***** But there should be no doubt that Puerto Rico needs help. Today. And over the next 10 years. * Sales tax funds traditionally have flowed into the COFINA trust fund before going into the budget—so sales tax funds only arrive in the budget after all the funds needed to make bond payments for the full year are set aside. That traditionally creates a hole in the budget from July to December. But, well, if sales tax receipts fall sharply, almost all of this year’s collections could go to the COFINA trust fund, with very little flowing into the budget until late in the year, if at all. (And to make this more complicated, the incremental sales tax revenue from the 2015 sales tax hike flows directly to the budget, this is only true for a portion of the sales tax proceeds—welcome to the wonderful world of securitization of general government revenues). ** The bond holders of the power company are offering to provide DIP financing to help PREPA meet the federal match, but only if some of their old bonds are also given priority. The second part may be a stumbling block; from afar, I would guess there might be less expensive ways to get DIP financing.  *** For corporate income tax purposes Puerto Rico is outside the United States, so the pharmaceutical industry can defer U.S. income tax on the “foreign” profit they earn on their Puerto Rican operations (which can be structured as controlled foreign corporations). **** Money is fungible, and there is an argument that the existing confirmed budget already covers essential medical care, so any new federal funds would be available for bond holders. I am no lawyer, but I would think creative legal drafting could limit the risk that new federal funds would be used for purposes other than raising access to medical care relative to the baseline in the current approved budget.  ***** Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal oped page, Dan Drezner, Vox, and others are all arguing for exempting Puerto Rico from the Jones Act—a completely reasonable proposal. But in my view the long-term impact of a Jones Act waiver would likely be fairly modest. The Jones Act unquestionably raises the cost of shipping goods from the U.S. to Puerto Rico, but it doesn't seem to raise the cost of shipping back to the U.S. (the ships have a lot of excess space on the return journey, as they sail back roughly 20 percent full: see this GAO report, page 17. The GAO report also offers a ton of institutional detail, including maps showing shipping routes to Puerto Rico). While permanently lifting the Jones Act would clearly provide a one-off increase to real income in Puerto Rico by lowering the cost of goods "imported" from the U.S., in my view, it isn't likely to be sufficient to overcome the disadvantages of geography or fundamentally change Puerto Rico’s economic trajectory.

Voices from the Field features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is authored by Heather Higginbottom, chief operating officer of CARE USA.

Although the tragedy of the Rohingya people has been unfolding for decades, the latest exodus of refugees to Bangladesh, fleeing violence in the Rakhine state of Myanmar, has become front-page news due to the sheer scale of the trauma. The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) puts the figure at 415,000 Rohingya who have fled their homes for Bangladesh in just the past three weeks. While struggling with its own development needs, Bangladesh is providing the last place of refuge for a stateless people often called “the most persecuted minority” in the world. To put the past month’s developments into historical perspective, Bangladesh—in the southernmost tip of the country, south of a port city named Cox’s Bazaar—began hosting Rohingya refugees in the 1970s. The first wave of around 200,000 refugees came in 1978. A second wave of around 250,000 fled Myanmar for Bangladesh in 1991–92. Although the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and international aid groups provided assistance for the refugees, Bangladesh long sought for the refugees to repatriate to Myanmar, rather than become permanent residents. A repatriation phase in the late 1990s saw some 230,000 Rohingya return to Myanmar. But in the summer of 2012, renewed religious violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state resulted in another influx to Bangladesh. Some Rohingya also attempted to reach Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand that summer, tragically, by boat. Bangladesh is a poor country by any measure. Using International Monetary Fund gross domestic product per capita data (purchasing power parity), it ranks among the poorest fifty countries in the world, illustrated by this chart. For this reason, Dhaka for years feared that the existence of refugee camps and settlements served as a “pull factor,” bringing more Rohingya to already-stressed Bangladesh. In the summer of 2012, Bangladesh prohibited three international aid organizations from assisting Rohingya who were not officially registered as refugees. In other words, Bangladesh has not always been a welcoming host. The problem has always been that however bad conditions may be in Bangladeshi refugee camps or makeshift settlements, the Rohingya are running from worse, often forced to leave whatever they possess behind, likely forever, and trudge for miles through mud and across a river to reach refuge in Bangladesh. That’s the backdrop for the events since August 25. According to the latest figures tracked by the Inter-Sector Coordination Group (a coalition of humanitarian agencies assisting with Rohingya relief in the Cox's Bazar area), a total of more than 197,000 “undocumented Myanmar nationals” had been resident in refugee camps, “makeshift settlements,” and “host communities” in this region of Bangladesh prior to August 25, 2017. Since that date, more than 420,000 have arrived in these same refugee camps, makeshift settlements, and host communities—with at least six new “spontaneous settlements” now housing more than 200,000 of this enormous population now totaling nearly 620,000. It is a tripling of the total number of refugees now in Bangladesh in under one month, all of whom need emergency medical attention and basic sustenance. Yesterday, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina gave an interview to Al Jazeera in which she said, “We have 160 million people in a small geographical land. But if we can feed 160 million people, another 500 or 700,000 people—we can do it.” But she has also clearly called for Myanmar to take back the Rohingya, consistent with Bangladesh’s longstanding position. As this tragedy continues, short of a sea change in Myanmar’s willingness to accept the Rohingya as their own citizens, the situation is unlikely to improve. That will mean continued existence as refugees, with the great bulk of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. And the refugees will continue to need international assistance to meet the most basic medical care and food security needs. The IOM just issued a fundraising appeal for $26 million to cover the coming three months. This crisis can only be solved through a political solution. But one appears nowhere in sight. My book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, will be out in January. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa. Or like me on Facebook (fb.me/ayresalyssa) or Instagram (instagr.am/ayresalyssa).

In a major address to the Myanmar public, and the international community today, Aung San Suu Kyi gave her first significant speech about the ongoing crisis in Rakhine State. This crisis has now become probably the worst humanitarian catastrophe in East Asia. Reports suggest that people have been fleeing Rakhine State at a faster rate than in any refugee exodus since 1971. Over 400,000 people have fled Rakhine State into Bangladesh in recent weeks. The UN has referred to the crisis as ethnic cleansing, and there seems to be no letup in the Myanmar military’s offensive in Rakhine State. Although President Trump did not mention the Rohingya in his address at the United Nations, Secretary of State Tillerson called Suu Kyi about the crisis. Other countries that historically have been strong backers of Suu Kyi, including Britain and Sweden, have expressed growing concern, and called private UN sessions about the crisis. Suu Kyi decided not to come to this week’s United Nations General Assembly, and instead gave a major speech in Naypyidaw about the crisis. The speech confirmed much of what has already become evident about her approach to Rakhine State. That approach, reflected in this speech, is one in which she downplays the crisis, focuses instead on her other domestic priorities, refuses to recognize the Rohingya as citizens of Myanmar, plays to overall public opinion in Myanmar, and mostly defers to the military. Suu Kyi sees her major priorities as addressing insurgencies in the north and northeast of the country, as I mentioned in a recent Washington Post article; she views the Rakhine crisis, however horrific, as just one among many challenges in border lands. The speech reflected these priorities. She, like many ethnic Burmans, seems to view the Rohingya as outsiders—she referred in the speech to “Muslims” in Rakhine State but did not refer to them as Rohingya. She also seems to understand the political calculus in Myanmar; most of the population, as well as the army commanders, probably are supportive of the army’s scorched earth approach to Rakhine State—or at least do not mind it. Crowds rallied in central Myanmar to hear and cheer Suu Kyi’s speech; the domestic context of how her approach to Rakhine is viewed is vastly different from the international context. Although Suu Kyi did indeed intend the speech for international audiences, and spoke in English, she only generally condemned all rights violations. She suggested that Naypyidaw did not understand the causes of the refugee outflow, basically pardoning the military for atrocities that are largely to blame for the exodus. She also seemed to suggest that the situation on the ground in Rakhine was becoming more peaceful and that many Rohingya were not fleeing—a dubious claim—and this might be because the situation in Rakhine is not as dire as the world believes. There is little evidence to support the idea that the armed forces are creating peace in Rakhine. She further added that Myanmar did not fear investigations into the crisis, even though journalists and aid workers have largely been kept out of northern Rakhine. There is political calculus by Suu Kyi in this speech. The military commander-in-chief dominates security policy, and she may feel she can little sway what the armed forces do in Rakhine anyway. Most of the Myanmar population probably is uninterested in Rakhine State—at best. But the speech was still even less than Suu Kyi perhaps could have said to an international audience, and it understates her own influence both domestically and internationally. Though the military has control of security policy, Suu Kyi’s immense popularity at home means that she could use the bully pulpit to change minds and indirectly influence the armed forces—and demonstrate that the civilian government is not totally prostrate to the army. She did not try to do any of those things today.

Myanmar is essentially run by one of the world’s most lauded humanitarians. Yet since her party took power last year, Aung San Suu Kyi—the country’s de facto leader, though not its official president—has stood by and watched the slaughter and flight of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Rohingya. In a speech earlier today in Myanmar, Suu Kyi again mostly ignored the plight of the Rohingya. For more on why Suu Kyi has shied away from confronting the issue, see my Washington Post Outlook article.