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International-domestic linkages in a developing-country context: the case of the Rohingyas in Bangladesh
Arnab Roy Chowdhury — School of Sociology, National Research University (NRU HSE), Moscow, Russian Federation
Since 1978, the Rohingya have been fleeing Myanmar and taking refuge in Bangladesh. The state of Bangladesh is not a signatory to the Geneva Convention and does not recognize refugee rights, but the initial experiences with the Rohingya refugee population led the government to create a temporary and ad hoc domestic policy advisory and refugee management system, which eventually became highly politicized. There was also some degree of slow “externalization” of policy advice through the involvement of international organizations from 2006–2007 onward, mainly through the participation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and International Organization for Migration (IOM). Over 2017–2018, there was amassive influx of refugees from Myanmar to Bangladesh.
The domestic advisory and refugee management system lacked the capacity to manage the crisis and had to quickly and greatly externalize policy advice and refugee management. The UNHCR and IOM came in with a host of international organizational networks and coordinated with each other and the state through a multi-sectoral approach to manage the crisis. This externalization led to the systematization and institutionalization of the state’s domestic advisory system. However, the effect of externalization on politicization is equivocal; on the one hand it decreased politicization of the domestic policy advisory system, but on the other hand, it created new levels of politicization.
Another, recent line of research has been the increased politicization of policy advice as elected political actors try to reassert the primacy of politics in the policy process (Howlett 2013; Craft and Howlett 2013; Savoie 2015). Current research sketches how various exogenous processes affect policy advisory systems. In the case of Bangladesh, the Rohingya refugee crisis has been the driver of change in the domestic advisory system of refugee management in the country. The analysis of the case of Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh focuses on domestic and external policy advisory services and on their interaction and evolution. The ministries of the Bangladesh government and its central public service agencies that manage the refugee population constitute the domestic policy advisory system, and intergovernmental organizations and INGOs make up the external policy advisory system.
Since August 2017, the Rohingya have been fleeing Myanmar en masse for Bangladesh. Bangladesh is not a signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention, but it has solicited the help of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in managing the refugee crisis. In conjunction with the internal policy advisory system of Bangladesh, the UNHCR and IOM (and their extended civil society networks) have been playing key advisory roles in managing this influx. Their involvement has rendered the refugee management system in Bangladesh more humane. The Government of Bangladesh (GoB) correctly thought that the solution to this problem of the protracted refugee crisis needs the participation and representation of a multiplicity of voices to provide informed policy advice. This paper analyses the role of UNHCR and IOM role in managing this crisis.
Bangladesh has a long history of hosting Rohingya refugees from the Northern Rakhine State of Myanmar. In recent times, Bangladesh has witnessed three large influxes of refugees. The earliest arrivals were recorded in 1948 during the independence of Burma (now Myanmar) when the territory now known as Bangladesh was called East Pakistan. The second influx was provoked in 1978 by repressive state practices in Myanmar, which forced 200,000 persons to emigrate. This movement was relatively brief; the vast majority were repatriated in a short time (Roy Chowdhury 2016). In the third influx, over 1991–1992, some 250,000 Rohingya fled serious state repression in the Northern Rakhine state of Myanmar (UNHCR 2007).
The violence that began on 25 August 2017 triggered a mass exodus of the Rohingya to Bangladesh. This was the most recent, and the fourth, influx. In the space of eight months, an estimated 700,000 Rohingyas fled Myanmar citing lack of safety and security, arbitrary arrests, and restrictions on movement and livelihoods. They joined the 300,000 Rohingyas already in Bangladesh following earlier waves of displacement. As of April 2018, more than a million Rohingyas are estimated to be sheltering in Bangladesh in Cox’ Bazar district in a vulnerable and traumatized condition (ISCG 2017a, 2018a; IOM 2018).
In Bangladesh, they stay in 28 collective sites and 99 locations dispersed in host communities. There are 28 collective sites in Ukhia and Teknaf,2 comprising 22 new spontaneous sites, three makeshift settlements, two refugee camps, and one collective setting in the host community area. The 99 dispersed sites within host communities include 41 locations in Teknaf, 25 in Ukhia, 20 in Cox’s Bazar Sadar, and 10 in Ramu (IOM 2018). The population in need is over 1.3 million (300,000 existing Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazaar; 700,000 new arrivals; 91,000 contingency; and 300,000 host population). The existing Rohingya population includes those living in camps and those living outside illegally. The Bangladesh–Myanmar border is porous and lets refugees cross undetected, especially through the forested areas in Teknaf and Tamu sub-districts and settling in spontaneous sites (UNHCR 2007, 2018). The GoB designed the Rohingya Refugee Crisis Response Plan to save the lives of the most vulnerable and protect and assist them.
