Rohingya Refugees: Implications of the Right to Return and the Right to Remain

Abstract

This study explores two related notions – the right to return and the right to remain of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, now living in camps in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, across the border. The study views these rights, and tries to make sense of them, through the light of human rights, human security and human capital approaches, combined. Based on secondary studies, official and NGO reports and various other on-line documents, the study looks for discussion of the constraints on the capabilities of the Rohingya to fulfil their right to return and their right to remain. With this background, it is not surprising that the main causes of Rohingyas displacement have included: rejection of their historic right to citizenship and identity; patterns of land colonization; ethnic discrimination in livelihoods and education; ethnic and religious exclusion that as has been mentioned bear some similarities to internationally condemned forms of apartheid segregation. Denial of the rights of ethnic Rohingyas to equal citizenship rights is both one of the root causes of the Rohingya refugee question and an element that worsens the problem of statelessness. Torn between the impossibility of returning, and the fact of their statelessness in Bangladesh, the Rohingya are really stuck in Bangladesh, and the prospects for them to be granted citizenship in Bangladesh are also poor.