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Bringing Rohingya Refugees Off-Track of Long-Term Economic Vulnerability in Bangladesh
By Joseph M. Fernando is Associate Professor in History Dept. University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Kengatharan Shandralingam is in UN Head Office
The ethnic Rohingya is experiencing not only marginalization and statelessness in Myanmar but also facing brutal oppression, violence perpetrated by some in the ethnic majority for many decades. Bangladesh has long been a major Rohingya refugees hosting country and currently, it hosts around 600,000 refugees. Beside recently arrived refugees, there are thousands of refugees, who have been staying in Bangladesh for around three decades as registered or unregistered refugees. Long-term refugees, as per many reports, have been heavily relying on international aid, amid their poor socioeconomic development in Bangladesh.
The development of Rohingya refugees is analyzed in this paper from the dimensions of Bangladesh, as a host country; poor human development of Rohingya refugees, and the wider international community. National competition for limited availability of resources and opportunities in Bangladesh; poor human development of Rohingya refugees, make them prolong dependents for refugee handouts. To obtain sustainable development of Rohingya population in Bangladesh, this paper proposes an appeal to international producers to make them financially sound by offering employment opportunities by establishing production plants in Bangladesh. In addition, to avoid hostilities with the local population, equal composition of refugees and the local population is suggested in employee recruitments.
The majority Rohingya population in Myanmar is confined within their district. They are engaged in conventional agriculture and fisheries, small-scale self-business, labours in construction, and vending. The world has been much more concerned about Rohingya issue since 1992 military crackdown, that paved the way for around 200,000 fled the country towards Bangladesh (Imran, 2014; Nemoto, n.d.; Arfin Khan, Uddin, & Haque, 2012). The ‘mixed maritime movement’ in 2015, in which, according the report of the UNHCR (2016), 370 persons tragically lost their live in the middle of perilous journey in the sea. They died mostly from starvation, dehydration, disease, and abuse by smugglers.
The latest violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in 2017, further caused more than 600,000 fled to Bangladesh (UNHCR, 2016; WHO, 2017). The latest report of Inter-Sector Coordination Group (ISCG) in Bangladesh highlights that as of 14 January 2018, there were around 656,000 people registered as newly arrived, coupled with the existing 212,000, yielded a total of around 868,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh (Reliefweb, 2017; UNHCR, 2016). Obviously, the plight of newly arrived refugees is far most heavier than previous ones, due to the untenable situation of (i) Bangladesh, as host country, is economically lower middle income category with growing working age population and higher unemployment rate, (ii) mass influx of Rohingya refugees in a short period of time, (iii) the Rohingya, even in Myanmar, who has long been suffering material deprivation with very lower Human Development Index, and (iv) wider international community in dispatching human, material resources in handling Rohingya refugees crisis, as this decade has become the peak for global refugee crisis in 21st century, affecting millions of population across Asia, Middle East and northern Africa.
Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority (Danish Immigration Service, 2011; Equal Rights Trust, 2014), are inhabitants of Rakhine, which is a state in Myanmar. Rakhine is situated in the western coast, bordered by Chin state in north, Bay of Bengal in the west, Bangladesh in northwest, and Thailand in south (Chakraborty, n.d; Myanmar, 2017). The situation of Rakhine state is plagued by historical center-periphery tensions. Severe inter-communal violence between minority Muslim population and others yields extreme poverty and under-development (International Crisis Group, 2014). The land extend of Rakhine state is 36,762 square kilometers. The government of Myanmar and the majority ethnic Buddhists do not recognize them as citizen of Myanmar (Nemoto, n.d.; Ullah, 2011).
They consider Rohingya Muslims, a large flock of illegal Bengali migrants, encroached huge swath of land area in the west coast of their country before centuries, do not belong to Myanmar. Kipgen (2014) cited that amid Myanmar’s progressive development on many issues, the problem of Rohingya is persisting and largely unaddressed. The Rakhine states consist of majority Buddhist as well as significant Muslim population, which include ethnic Rohingya – the term rejected by the government of Myanmar (International Crisis Group, 2014). Prolong oppression policies by the government of Myanmar on Rohingya minorities deny their citizenship. Myanmar government limits their free movement (Imran, 2014), access to state facilities such as education, health, employment opportunities and forcefully pushed them into great destitution (Danish Immigration Service; Equal Rights Trust, 2014; European Union, 2017; Myanmar, 2017; Ullah, 2011). Kipgen (2014) argued that empirical evidence clearly show that the ethnic Rohingya population is not only marginalized socioeconomically, but also being kept away from Myanmar’s wider political arena both locally and nationally.
