The long haul ahead for Myanmar’s Rohingya refugee crisis

Myanmar’s Rakhine State has long been afflicted by a toxic mixture of centre-periphery tensions, communal and religious conflict, and extreme poverty and underdevelopment. In 2014, Crisis Group warned that the state’s turmoil represented “a significant threat to the overall success of the country’s transition” away from military rule. Muslims in Rakhine, particularly the Rohingya, have long been subject to state-sponsored discrimination and denial of rights, considered by Amnesty International to amount to apartheid, a crime against humanity. The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) militant group, which also refers to itself as Harakah al-Yaqin (Faith Movement), emerged in the wake of communal strife in 2012. It launched attacks on security posts in northern Rakhine in October 2016 and August 2017. These attacks provoked an indiscriminate military response that the United Nations, foreign governments and human rights organisations have branded as ethnic cleansing, likely involving crimes against humanity and possibly genocide. Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since 25 August 2017. This report assesses the political and conflict dynamics at play in the refugee camps in Bangladesh and in Rakhine State, looks at how the crisis may evolve, and examines what options the Myanmar government and international community have for addressing it.