Genocide, violence and forced migration in South East Asia: An assessment on Rohingya refugee crisis

As the world has been reluctantly witnessing for decades, the Rohingya people have faced organized discrimination, statelessness, and targeted violence in Rakhine State, Myanmar. The intensity of brutality was so dense in 2017 that the UN called it a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, whilst some others called ‘genocide’ and ‘crime against humanity.’ It is the outcome of decade-long systematic, state-sponsored discrimination that has denied Rohingya citizenship and their freedom. In the contemporary scenario, they are the world’s most numerous “stateless” people, whose future is uncertain and who have left with the imagination whether they will ever receive the legitimate claim on their inhabit land. When the question comes on refugee protection and livelihood there is abundant research that has been concentrated on the common obligation of refugee accessibility or distribution of basic necessity, public health care, and living condition. At the same time, it silent about the Refugee-hosting nations are living within the most vulnerable conditions where forced and bonded labor, arbitrary arrest, sexual exploitation, domestic abuses , and human trafficking are highly prevalent. In addition to that, the creation of exploitative conditions, which deny the Rohingya equal opportunity to establish secure livelihoods illustrated that the journey, initiated in search of safety has terminated with despaired, destitution and abuse. Apart from the factors of this genocide, I have explored and examined that the current situation is an outcome of the failure of the nation-state, absence of effective governance, transnational governance, and the legal infrastructure in the hosting nation of South East Asia.