dialogue rohingya crisis in Bangladesh
Answers
At the 33rd ASEAN summit in Singapore last year, the issue of the Rakhine/Rohingya crisis was high on the agenda. The chairman’s statement expressed ASEAN’s readiness to support Myanmar in the repatriation process by conducting a needs assessment in the Rakhine state.
It also recognized the need to find comprehensive and durable solutions to the crisis and to create conducive conditions for refugees to return and rebuild their lives and encouraged Myanmar to take forward the implementation of the recommendations of the Rakhine Advisory Commission led by the late United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan.
A year later, on the eve of the 35th ASEAN Summit in Thailand (slated for Oct. 31 to Nov. 4), things have not moved forward as hoped. Not a single Rohingya has agreed voluntarily to the official repatriation process, and while Myanmar has developed physical infrastructure in Rakhine in preparation for repatriation, too little has been done to guarantee security and basic rights of the Rohingya to convince them to return.
Bangladesh, now host to more than 1 million Rohingya refugees, has become increasingly frustrated at what it perceives to be a lack of progress on Myanmar’s side in creating conducive conditions for return, and Myanmar has accused Bangladesh of delaying the repatriation process.
Thus, instead of confidence building, over the last year, more trust has been lost between Myanmar and Bangladesh as well as between Myanmar and Rohingya refugees in the camps in Cox’s Bazar. If there are any lessons to be learned for ASEAN, it is that rushing into repatriation without building a foundation of trust is not possible. Therefore, if ASEAN is to help Myanmar find a way forward in addressing this crisis, it must prioritize trust-building and dialogue.
ASEAN and Myanmar have done some things right in their engagement on this complex crisis. Most significantly, in late July 2019, in line with a recommendation of the ASEAN-Emergency Reponse and Assessment Team’s (ERAT) preliminary needs assessment, Myanmar sent a delegation from their Foreign Ministry, accompanied by ASEAN-ERAT team members, to visit Cox’s Bazar and hold a dialogue with Bangladesh government officials and with Rohingya refugees in the camps. The visit was an important confidence-building measure by Myanmar, one that was warmly welcomed by Bangladesh and, most importantly, Rohingya refugees themselves.
While no agreement was reached between the Myanmar delegation and the refugee representatives, the dialogue showed goodwill on both sides to engage in much-needed discussions about the repatriation process that Myanmar was offering, and refugees articulated their concerns and conditions for returning voluntarily.
The Myanmar delegation promised to communicate the requests of the refugees to the Myanmar government and to follow-up with the next dialogue within three months. Unfortunately, the dialogue has so far not been followed up.
Instead, Myanmar decided to push ahead with yet another attempt at repatriation on Aug. 22, which came as a surprise to refugees as well as to ASEAN.