Rohingya

Last week, it was reported that the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a memorandum of understanding for a plan to eventually repatriate large numbers of Rohingya from Bangladesh back to Myanmar. Over 600,000 Rohingya reportedly have fled into Bangladesh since August 2017 alone. In August, Rakhine violence—which has been severe in Rakhine State for five years now—spiked once again. That number of refugees in camps inside Bangladesh does not include the many Rohingya who had fled into Bangladesh before August 2017. Reporting about the details of the memorandum on return remain sketchy. CNN reported that “So far, no official details have been released on the agreement, what it would entail and under what circumstances the Rohingya would return.” The New York Times reported that “Neither side [Dhaka or Naypyidaw] gave many details, apart from a vague commitment to beginning a repatriation process within two months’ time.” Still, before any Rohingya return to Myanmar, both countries would need to adequately answer several questions. First, is it really safe for Rohingya to return? There is little evidence that the campaign of ethnic cleansing in Rakhine State, reportedly overseen by the security forces and encouraged by many hard-line Buddhist nationalist religious and political leaders, has even stopped. Human rights organizations are still recording details of refugees fleeing into Bangladesh saying that ethnic cleansing remains underway in Rakhine State. Much of the northern part of the state is still often inaccessible to monitors and journalists. Who will determine that it is safe for Rohingya to leave Bangladesh and go into Myanmar? According to some reports, Dhaka and Naypyidaw have agreed to allow UNHCR to oversee repatriation of Rohingya back to Myanmar. But how can UNHCR do so while violence is still going on in Rakhine State? What’s more, the Myanmar government reportedly has not agreed to allow UNHCR full access to Rakhine State. Second, where would Rohingya who returned to Rakhine State be housed? Many have not only been driven out of their homes by a campaign of violence but also witnessed their dwellings burnt to the ground or seized by local police or Buddhist residents. It seems highly unlikely that the Myanmar army, Rakhine politicians, and the national government would allow Rohingya to return to their homes; Naypyidaw seems uninterested in some kind of program to resettle Rohingya elsewhere in Rakhine State. Instead, as Amnesty International has warned, Rohingya who did return into Myanmar could wind up in camps that are already established in Rakhine State. Those camps, which have held Rohingya since the violence first broke out five years ago, have been condemned by rights organizations as little more than open-air jails or concentration camps. Third, even if international monitors were allowed to travel in Rakhine State freely, and there was a real opportunity for Rohingya to return and rebuild communities in Rakhine, what rights would they have—and who would pay for their resettlement? As it currently stands, most Rohingya are disenfranchised, and are viewed by most national, ethnic Bamar politicians as aliens to the Myanmar state—as people who are not one of the state’s recognized groups and thus do not enjoy the rights of Myanmar citizens. Meanwhile, hard-line Buddhist nationalism is on the rise in Myanmar, and no prominent politician, including Aung San Suu Kyi, will risk alienating Buddhist nationalists. If the Rohingya return, to Rakhine State or other parts of the country, but they do not have citizenship rights, they will remain complete outsiders to the Myanmar state-building project, and will live outside the rule of law. They will have few legal protections, and no protectors in government If Rohingya return to Myanmar without getting such legal rights, what guarantees will they have that there won’t be pogroms against them in the future? This is a question that Pope Francis, who is visiting Myanmar and Bangladesh this week on one of the most difficult trips of his papacy, should raise with Myanmar’s military and civilian leaders.

During his meeting today (Myanmar time) with senior Myanmar leaders including the head of the military and de factor civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson struck some important themes. Tillerson declared that there were “credible reports of widespread atrocities committed by Myanmar’s security forces and by vigilantes who were unrestrained by the security forces during the recent violence in Rakhine State.” He did not try to downplay the credibility of such reports. He also called upon the military and Myanmar’s civilian leaders to allow investigators full access to Rakhine State, including northern Rakhine State. He did not call the violence “ethnic cleansing,” but left open the possibility that Washington would indeed label it that. Tillerson also suggested that the crisis in Rakhine State should be met with targeted individual U.S. sanctions, probably on military leaders involved in overseeing atrocities. As I have noted, the threat of targeted sanctions would have been a more effective deterrent in October 2016, before this latest round of violence began in August 2017. Such a threat against the Myanmar military’s top leadership might indeed have served the purpose as a deterrent. But still, Tillerson is right to consider targeted sanctions now. He did not, however, give any timetable for targeted sanctions. The visit also included several important missed opportunities. First, the joint appearance allowed Aung San Suu Kyi to (again) basically say nothing about the severe rights abuses in Rakhine State. Instead, she once again deferred, telling reporters in a press conference, “It’s important to bring peace and stability to this country and that can only be done on the basis of rule of law and everybody should understand that the role of theirs is to protect peace and stability, not to punish people.” It was yet another missed chance for Suu Kyi to make any kind of tough public statement on the crisis and the role of the military in it. Other top members of the NLD have, in recent weeks, offered similar stonewalling about the crisis in Rakhine State, publicly supporting the military’s theories that no abuses have gone on there. Suu Kyi went on to praise Tillerson for “keeping an open mind,” a phrase that seems to appear like the Myanmar leader was praising him for not condemning the Myanmar military more harshly. The New York Times further reported that: At the news conference on Wednesday, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi defended her statements [in which she has said little about Rakhine State], saying, ‘I don’t know why people say I’ve been silent’ about the Rohingya, and suggesting that perhaps what she has said was not ‘interesting enough’ or ‘incendiary.’ In addition, Tillerson used the visit to call for what Reuters called a “credible investigation” of human rights abuses in Rakhine State. This formulation suggests that there has not already been a credible investigation, which is hardly the case—and it potentially gives Naypyidaw the chance to buy more time. Tillerson did not specifically call for a UN-led, fully independent investigation into the situation in Rakhine. And in reality, multiple rights organizations, as well as the United Nations, have completed extensive investigations and concluded that severe rights abuses, even ethnic cleansing, are taking place in Rakhine State. (In response, on Monday the Myanmar military put out its own “investigation” into the situation in Rakhine State and basically absolved itself of all blame.)

The Five Questions Series is a forum for scholars, government officials, civil society leaders, and foreign policy practitioners to provide timely analysis of new developments related to the advancement of women and girls worldwide. This conversation is with Skye Wheeler, an emergencies researcher in the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch, who in October interviewed over 50 Rohingya women and girls living in and around the Kutupalong Refugee Camp in Bangladesh, after fleeing violence in Myanmar.

Today, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a bill that would not allow certain types of military cooperation with the Myanmar armed forces, and would place sanctions and travel restrictions on top members of the Myanmar military linked to the Rakhine State violence. These restrictions would continue as long as the violence continued. The bill is an important, although belated, first step in pushing the Myanmar military to end the violence in Rakhine State, and to demonstrate that foreign countries will demand a degree of accountability from the Myanmar government for actions toward the Rohingya, which the United Nations has called “ethnic cleansing.” It also puts back on a U.S. ban on jade and rubies from Myanmar, a sanction that had been lifted. The crisis in Rakhine State shows no signs of abating; refugees continue to pour into makeshift camps in Bangladesh, while military actions appear to be continuing. De facto head of government Aung San Suu Kyi this week made her first visit to the center of the violence, northern Rakhine State, but she barely said anything about the crisis at all. Medicins Sans Frontiers and other aid organizations are warning that there is a high risk of major disease outbreaks in the understaffed and overcrowded camps in Bangladesh. It would have been better if the Senate, other parts of the U.S. government, and other key foreign actors like the European Union, had taken action sooner—such as by imposing such restrictions on the Myanmar military after an earlier round of violence that began in October 2016. Earlier action might have served a warning, a deterrent effect, to top Myanmar leaders that foreign countries would not stand by and do nothing if the Rakhine violence continued. This deterrent effect would have been multiplied if other foreign actors, from whom the Myanmar army seeks recognition, training, and possibly arms deals, had imposed such restrictions and sanctions in October 2016 as well. But they did not. As I noted in a recent Atlantic article, Myanmar commander in chief Min Aung Hlaing in 2016 and much of 2017 was a welcomed visitor in Europe and Japan. He made high-profile visits to Austria, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Japan. On several of his stops, Min Aung Hlaing apparently made side visits to defense and aerospace companies. Still, the senators’ action is a step. Now, other parts of the U.S. government, and other important actors with leverage over Myanmar, should take action as well. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has expressed concern about the situation in Myanmar but has not been as prominent a voice on the crisis as UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, plans to visit Myanmar this month, according to the Associated Press. He should use his trip to warn top military leaders of tougher, multinational sanctions on the Myanmar military if the violence continues, and to warn the NLD as well that civilian leaders are not necessarily exempt from a re-imposition of targeted sanctions either. In addition, Tillerson should press the Myanmar government to allow aid workers, journalists, and UN monitors real access to the most devastated parts of Rakhine State. He also should warn top Myanmar officials that, ultimately, the United States and other actors could push for the United Nations to refer the Rakhine crisis to the International Criminal Court (ICC), a move called for by Fortify Rights and other rights organizations. The ICC could potentially investigate the Rakhine crisis for evidence of crimes against humanity. Other international actors can play a role as well. They could hold a major aid conference to help refresh funding for camps in Bangladesh, to improve the quality of conditions there and prevent major disease outbreaks. The European Union also should impose a travel ban and targeted sanctions on all top members of the Myanmar armed forces, until the violence is resolved and there is some path forward to reconciliation and peace in Rakhine State.

A new report from the Women and Foreign Policy program and the Center for Preventive Action, launched this week, highlights the global security threat posed by conflict-related sexual violence and outlines policy steps that the U.S. government should take to prevent and respond to such violence. Armies and armed groups in conflicts around the world often subject noncombatants—particularly women and children—to sexual violence, such as rape, sexual slavery, and forced marriage. Despite international recognition of this devastating abuse as a crime against humanity, sexual violence continues to plague conflicts from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to Syria. The practice has also proliferated among extremist groups, including Boko Haram in Nigeria and the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, who use sexual violence as a tactic of terror and a form of currency in a shadow economy. And most recently, Burmese government forces reportedly have committed ethnically motivated rape and gang rape against women and girls amid escalating conflict in the Rakhine State. Rights groups assert that this sexual violence is not random or opportunistic, but is rather part of a systematic attack against the Rohingya minority.  Sexual violence in conflict is not simply a gross violation of human rights—it is also a security challenge. Wartime rape fuels displacement, weakens governance, and destabilizes communities, thereby inhibiting postconflict reconciliation and imperiling long-term stability.  Combating conflict-related sexual violence thus merits a higher place on the U.S. foreign policy agenda. Although the U.S. government has taken modest steps to address sexual violence in conflict under successive Republican and Democratic administrations, more action is needed.  The new report suggests that the current administration should require training on conflict-related sexual violence in U.S. security cooperation efforts; expand the number of women serving in militaries, police, and peacekeeping forces around the world; increase accountability for the crime of sexual violence; and undermine terrorist financing streams raised through the abduction of women and children. These steps will help the United States and its allies respond effectively to the security threat posed by conflict-related sexual violence and advance U.S. interests in peace and stability. Read the full report here >>  

At the United Nations last month, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley called for a tough international response to alleged atrocities against Rohingya by security forces in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State. Haley, who said that “We cannot be afraid to call the actions of the Burmese authorities what they appear to be: a brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority,” demanded that all nations stop sending arms to the Myanmar military. Congress was on the same page. A week earlier, Senator John McCain had already declared that he would pull language in the annual defense authorization bill that would have boosted military to military ties with the Myanmar army. Other countries, too, have laid into the Myanmar military in recent weeks, as the horrific exodus from Rakhine State continues—over 500,000 Rohingya have reportedly fled into Bangladesh since late August. But the tough words today about the Myanmar army leadership are a sharp reversal for most developed democracies.  For more on how countries have recently—and perhaps unwisely—courted the Myanmar military, see my new piece in The Atlantic.

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).

Since late August, when attacks by Rohingya insurgents on police posts in Myanmar led to a massive reprisal by the army and other security forces in Rakhine State, the country has witnessed some of its worst violence in years. The armed forces, and apparently local vigilantes, have driven over 400,000 Rohingya out of Rakhine just since August. The plight of the Rohingya has captured significant international attention. It has been covered in major news outlets and at the top of the agenda at the United Nations, but the discussion has focused on Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto head of government—and not on the top generals. Suu Kyi has come in for withering criticism (including from me here) from other Nobel laureates, rights groups, and foreign officials for downplaying the crisis in Rakhine State. Suu Kyi is hardly without blame, but not nearly enough focus has been placed on the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. To read more on Min Aung Hlaing and his role, see my new article in The National.

Despite Myanmar’s recent transition to civilian leadership, the military has retained significant power and is most to blame for the sectarian violence against the Rohingya.

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.

Voices from the Field features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is authored by Mayesha Alam, a Soros New American Fellow, Yale Law School Global Health Justice Partnership Fellow, and Ph.D. candidate in political science at Yale University.  She is the author of “Women and Transitional Justice: Progress and Persistent Challenges in Retributive and Restorative Processes” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

The following is a guest post by Megan Roberts, associate director of the International Institutions and Global Governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations. The pace and scale of the violence currently unfolding in Myanmar is difficult to comprehend. Since August 25 this year, 430,000 Rohingya—more than a third of the ethnic minority’s population—have fled the country and an estimated 1,000 have died in a scorched earth campaign that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” In his previous role as head of the UN’s refugee agency, Secretary-General António Guterres would no doubt have been seized with the task of responding this rapidly spiraling crisis. Perhaps this in part informed his decision to appeal directly to the UN Security Council earlier this month, imploring the body to act in the face of a mounting crisis. Guterres’ official letter, the first sent from a secretary-general to the Council in nearly 30 years, amounted to a rare, if implicit, exercise of Article 99 of the UN Charter, which gives the secretary-general the authority to “bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.” The Rohingya, often referred to as the world’s most persecuted minority, have faced decades of oppression and discrimination in Myanmar. The current crisis began when a group of Rakhine State insurgents launched attacks on security forces, killing approximately a dozen people. The attacks came just a day after former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan delivered the final report of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State. Myanmar’s security forces responded with indiscriminate “clearance operations,” razing hundreds of villages. Because the government strictly limits access to Rakhine State, details of the extensive destruction come from the hundreds of thousands streaming over the border into Bangladesh, though satellite images confirm that thousands of homes have been burned. Facing scathing criticism for her failure to take action, Nobel Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi skipped this year’s UN General Assembly high-level meetings, but in a major speech on the crisis, she equivocated on the role of the armed services, saying there had been “allegations and counter-allegations.” The Rohingya crisis has sparked a change of tone from Guterres, who has been criticized for failing to shine a light on human rights abuses and atrocities, relying instead on quiet diplomacy to forge peace. He has spoken several times with Suu Kyi, imploring her to act. He has also made a series of escalating public calls for action, including during a recent press conference, where he highlighted the crisis as an issue at the top of global concerns. When asked whether he thought the violence amounted to ethnic cleansing, Guterres responded, “When one-third of the Rohingya population had to flee the country, can you find a better word to describe it?” Fed up with a lack of action by Myanmar authorities, a frustrated Guterres lamented that the government “has been completely deaf to our requests.” He also drew attention to the crisis in his first General Assembly address as secretary-general. Guterres’ official letter called for the Security Council to send a strong political message both to halt the current crisis and to support a strategy to “help end the vicious cycle in Rakhine.” He warned that it “risks degenerating into a humanitarian catastrophe with implications for peace and security that could continue to expand beyond the borders of Myanmar.” Though the letter did not directly reference Article 99, the secretary-general noted in a later press conference that it was an exercise of exactly these powers. Guterres himself noted that his letter was the first such official appeal to the Council since 1989, when then Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar asked it to meet to discuss Lebanon. The letter was one of the earliest instances that a secretary-general had ever used such powers, either officially or informally, during their tenure. Moreover, as Loraine Sievers and Sam Daws note, Guterres went beyond previous invocations of Article 99 in that he implored the Council to act rather than simply to meet. Appealing directly to the Council is not without risk: Myanmar is a complex agenda item. China has long shielded the country from the Security Council’s spotlight, arguing that its security challenges are internal issues and therefore do not fall within the Council’s purview. By imploring the Council to act on Myanmar, Guterres risks drawing the ire of one of the Security Council’s permanent members early in his tenure. This comes not long after he warned that China would occupy any space the United States created by a global retreat in an “America First” era. In taking this action, the secretary-general is fulfilling commitments that he made in his campaign for the role. In the process to select Ban Ki-moon’s successor, Guterres focused on the importance of prevention, pledging to use all opportunities to bring matters of international peace and security to the Security Council’s attention. The more open selection process revealed that, at least rhetorically, many member states sought a strong leader for an institution that appeared paralyzed in the face of intractable challenges, from the devastating war in Syria to famine risk in the horn of Africa. After carefully cultivating productive working relationships with member states, most notably with the US, since his election, Guterres was hoping to expend this political capital as many of his bosses descended on Turtle Bay for high-level meetings of the General Assembly. Political momentum for action, spurred in part by Guterres’s letter, appears to be building, even if it still pales in comparison to the scale of the crisis. On September 13, after briefings from Guterres and his under-secretary-general for political affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, the Security Council agreed in a closed meeting to release a press statement condemning the violence. Although many observers had hoped for a stronger statement, it was the first time in nine years that the Council had come together to issue one on Myanmar. The crisis also commanded leaders’ attention during the opening week of the General Assembly, including during two high-level events and in a number of member statements seeking to shine a light on this crisis. Seven members of the Security Council have requested a public briefing from Guterres on the crisis, and several council members have also suggested openness to further action if the situation continues to deteriorate. Here, China’s attitude is likely to determine the extent and pace of such progress. None of this activity immediately ameliorates the dire conditions of the Rohingya living in temporary camps in Bangladesh, or those displaced within Myanmar who are not receiving any international support. And observers are right to criticize the UN’s outdated toolbox for responding to such crises. But amidst the tragedy, it is at least encouraging that the secretary-general has dusted off a long-underused instrument for focusing international attention on the plight of the Rohingya. This article originally appeared on the International Peace Institute's Global Observatory.

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).