Image Courtesy: Disruptive Asia

Rohingya Refugee Crisis

Authors: Wazhma Rahmani & Ayyan Tareen | Policy analysts with State Fragility and Displacement Initiative 

Executive Summary

This paper examines the complex political and policy dimensions of the Rohingya refugee crisis, with a focus on how state and regional actors reproduce statelessness. Rooted in Myanmar's colonial and post-independence policies, the situation has escalated due to systemic exclusion, statelessness, and ethnic persecution. The analysis explores the roles of Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, and ASEAN in shaping the refugee experience and provides actionable recommendations for regional cooperation and international intervention. 

This is Nur's experience, now working as a Burmese language instructor at a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Like Nur, thousands of other Rohingyas were forced out of their livelihoods in Myanmar, barely making it to the borders of Bangladesh, which has become the primary host for the Rohingya. Fueled in 2017, the crisis is said to have roots in the British colonial policies of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which divided populations into two categories: the natives and the non-natives. Despite living in the region for hundreds of years, the Rohingyas were labelled as immigrants, setting the foundation for what was to become a societal division persisting even in post-independent Myanmar

To read the complete policy brief, please click here.

To have a better understanding of the refugee crisis in Rohingya, please check the following interactive dashboard, developed by David Okojie, which shows the destination of refugees from Rohingya.