by Arafat Hossain
Before 2017, Myo Thu Gyi village tract in northern Arakan contained more than 800 Rohingya homes, shops, markets and mosques. By 2018, more than 411 acres had been burned and flattened, and a large Border Guard Police base had been built on the site. This was not an isolated case. An investigation by the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar found that, in seven village tracts it examined, Rohingya homes and properties were destroyed after residents fled, before security installations were constructed on the cleared land.
Across Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships, UN satellite analysis identified 411 settlements damaged or destroyed between August 2017 and November 2018. Approximately 40,600 structures were destroyed. Mosques, cemeteries, farmland, homes and businesses were not merely abandoned in the chaos of displacement. In documented cases, they were demolished, appropriated and repurposed through coordinated action involving the Myanmar military, Border Guard Police, government authorities and private companies. The IIMM’s findings establish that the assault on the Rohingya was also an assault on their physical and territorial existence.
This fact exposes a fundamental weakness in the international discussion of Rohingya repatriation. Diplomats repeatedly speak of returning refugees to Myanmar, but rarely answer the question on which any meaningful return depends: return to what?
For many Rohingya families, the village to which they are expected to return may no longer exist. Their land may be occupied, converted into a security installation, allocated to others or administratively reclassified. Village names and boundaries may have been altered, while the institutions that would ordinarily adjudicate ownership remain neither independent nor accessible to Rohingya claimants.
Crossing the Bangladesh–Myanmar border cannot, by itself, constitute return. Return requires restoration of the rights that made a place home: the right to possess land, rebuild a house, cultivate fields, inherit property, use communal resources and live without the permanent threat of renewed expulsion.
The international community therefore needs to move beyond the language of repatriation and establish a concrete framework for housing, land and property restitution. Without such a framework, repatriation could place Rohingya families in transit centres, segregated settlements or displacement sites inside Myanmar while presenting their movement across the border as a durable solution.
Restitution must begin before repatriation
The UN Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons, commonly known as the Pinheiro Principles, recognise the right of displaced people to recover housing, land and property of which they were unlawfully deprived. Where actual restoration is factually impossible, an independent and impartial tribunal may determine appropriate compensation. The principles also establish that restitution should be treated as the preferred remedy for displacement and dispossession, rather than being reduced automatically to cash compensation.
For the Rohingya, this means that the land-claims process cannot wait until refugees have returned. Requiring a claimant to enter an insecure territory before being permitted to assert a property right would make access to justice contingent upon exposure to the very authorities or armed actors whose conduct may be under challenge.
Mobile claims offices should therefore be established in the refugee camps in Bangladesh. These offices could document the village of origin of each family, the location of its homestead, the approximate area of agricultural land it possessed and the surrounding physical features by which the land can be identified. Nearby mosques, cemeteries, ponds, canals, roads, markets, schools, forests and hills may be crucial in reconstructing locations where formal plot markers and administrative records have disappeared.
This documentation should form the basis of an independent and verifiable Rohingya Land and Village Registry for northern Arakan. The registry should include pre-2017 village boundaries, household-level homesteads, agricultural parcels, ponds, grazing areas, customary forest-use areas, markets, mosques, madrasas, schools, cemeteries, village roads and other communal resources. It should also record the current use of each property, whether a military installation or new settlement has been constructed there and what evidence supports the original claim.
This would involve more than producing a cadastral map. Displacement may have been followed by the alteration of maps, place names, land classifications and administrative boundaries. Historical government records should therefore be compared with pre-2017 satellite imagery, UNOSAT destruction mapping, village maps maintained by humanitarian organisations, land-tax receipts, household lists, mobile-phone photographs and testimony from former village administrators, neighbours and community elders.
A refugee family cannot give informed consent to return without knowing the condition of its land, who currently occupies it and whether there is a credible process for restoring its rights. Consent obtained while such information is withheld cannot meaningfully be described as voluntary. UNHCR itself defines voluntary repatriation as the free and informed return of refugees in safety and dignity and identifies housing and property restitution as part of the conditions required for return.
Formal deeds cannot be the only admissible evidence
Decades of discrimination weakened the ability of Rohingya families to acquire, update and preserve formal land documents. Denial of citizenship, restrictions on movement, discriminatory household registration and limited access to government offices constrained their capacity to formalise property rights. When families fled in 2017, documents were burned with their homes, left behind or lost on the journey to Bangladesh.
If modern title deeds are made the exclusive form of admissible evidence, the restitution mechanism will reproduce the discrimination that made such documents difficult to obtain in the first place.
Land-tax receipts, household lists, agricultural permits, certificates issued by former village administrators, inheritance testimony, corroborating statements from neighbours, historical satellite images, family photographs, hand-drawn village maps, evidence of long-term customary possession and physical landmarks such as mosques, cemeteries, roads and ponds should all be accepted as potential evidence.
Nor should claimants face the same burden of proof used in ordinary civil litigation. Where state authorities or armed actors participated in the destruction of records, it would be perverse to demand mathematically precise descriptions of every plot from the victims of that destruction.
A restitution system could instead establish a rebuttable presumption of prior possession. When a family presents credible evidence that it possessed or used a particular property before displacement, the claim should be presumed valid unless a competing party produces stronger contrary evidence. This would not eliminate evidentiary scrutiny. It would place the burden where justice requires it, rather than allowing the destruction of evidence to benefit those responsible for dispossession.
The IIMM has explicitly recognised these evidentiary barriers and recommended reliance on material extending beyond formal documentation, including geospatial imagery, witness testimony and other evidence of destruction and dispossession.
An independent Land Claims Commission is essential
Restitution cannot be entrusted to Myanmar’s existing land administration. The administrative system that denied Rohingya citizenship, controlled their movement and enabled land to be reclassified or allocated cannot reasonably be expected to adjudicate the consequences of those policies impartially.
Myanmar’s Farmland Law and Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Lands Management Law give administrative bodies extensive authority over land registration and dispute resolution. Such arrangements create a risk that land belonging to displaced people will be treated as “vacant,” “fallow” or “unused.” But land from which residents were expelled through mass violence is not abandoned land. Treating forced displacement as abandonment converts the consequences of a crime into the legal basis for a new property right.
A special and independent Rohingya Land Claims Commission is therefore required. One division should receive claims, digitise documents, interview claimants and verify maps, satellite evidence and testimony. An independent tribunal should adjudicate disputed ownership, inheritance conflicts, military occupation, company concessions and claims involving secondary occupants. Its decisions should be legally binding and subject only to a limited, time-bound appeal process.
An enforcement division would then survey boundaries, restore possession, issue titles or legally protected occupancy certificates, arrange compensation and ensure implementation of tribunal decisions.
The commission’s decisions must not be subject to veto by the Myanmar military, Border Guard Police, local administrative authorities or any de facto armed authority. Claimants should have access to free legal assistance, Rohingya-language forms and interpretation, witness protection and written decisions. A public database of decisions should be maintained while confidential personal information is protected.
A commission without Rohingya authority would lack legitimacy
A mechanism established for Rohingya claimants cannot rely on symbolic consultation. Rohingya representatives must hold substantive decision-making roles at every stage.
The commission should include Rohingya legal specialists, women representatives, elders familiar with customary landholding, former village administrators, youth representatives, diaspora documentation specialists and representatives of claimants living in Bangladesh. International experts may provide technical support, but they cannot substitute for the community’s knowledge of village geography, inheritance practices, customary possession and local history.
No rule should require a refugee to return to Myanmar before filing a claim. Physical return, property restitution and compensation are related but legally distinct. A person’s inability or unwillingness to return under unsafe conditions does not extinguish ownership or inheritance rights. Family members living in Bangladesh or elsewhere must therefore retain the right to submit and pursue claims.
Women’s property rights require particular protection. Many Rohingya families have lost male relatives to killing, disappearance, detention or separation. If applications are recognised only in the name of a male “household head,” widows, daughters, female-headed households and survivors of sexual violence will again be excluded from property ownership.
Women must be recognised as independent claimants. They must be permitted to submit claims without the approval of a male guardian and to assert inheritance, marital-property and occupancy rights. Confidential hearings and gender-sensitive evidentiary procedures will be necessary, particularly where the claimant’s displacement or loss of documents is connected to sexual violence or the death of family members.
Military bases and new settlements cannot simply be legalised
One of the most difficult questions concerns military and police facilities, roads, government buildings and new settlements constructed on former Rohingya land.
The location and construction date of every military installation, Border Guard Police base, road, helipad, government facility and commercial concession on former Rohingya land should be disclosed. Where a facility was constructed by taking advantage of the forced displacement that began in 2017, it cannot be retrospectively legitimised as an ordinary public-purpose acquisition.
Where possible, the installation should be removed and the original property returned. If restoration is genuinely impossible in an exceptional case, the claim of public necessity must be independently assessed. The claimant should receive land of equivalent quality, full compensation and reparation for lost use and income, based on informed consent. Military convenience cannot be accepted as proof of impossibility.
Secondary occupation also requires careful treatment. It would be unjust to classify every non-Rohingya family currently living on former Rohingya land as a criminal occupant. Some may themselves be poor, displaced or resettled there through state policy. Summary eviction could produce another cycle of dispossession and communal hostility.
Due process and state-funded alternative housing should therefore be provided to vulnerable secondary occupants. Yet their vulnerability cannot extinguish the rights of the original Rohingya owner. The responsibility of public authorities is not to force two impoverished communities to compete over the consequences of state-engineered dispossession. It is to restore the original claimant’s rights while providing a lawful alternative for occupants who are not directly responsible for the original seizure.
Restitution, reconstruction and compensation are separate remedies
Restitution means restoring the original land or property right. Reconstruction means rebuilding destroyed houses, schools, mosques, wells, roads and community infrastructure. Compensation addresses property that genuinely cannot be restored or losses that remain after restitution has taken place.
These remedies must not be collapsed into one another. A family may recover its land but still require support to rebuild its home. Agricultural land may be returned, but the family may remain entitled to compensation for destroyed crops, trees and livestock, years of lost income and the deterioration of the soil. The destruction of a cemetery, mosque or entire village network cannot be remedied through an individual cash payment alone.
Compensation should not be calculated solely according to the present market value of the land. The assessment must include destroyed homes and businesses, lost crops, trees and livestock, years of lost use and income, damage sustained during displacement and the loss of communal and cultural heritage.
Public acknowledgment, memorialisation and guarantees that the same forms of dispossession will not recur are also elements of reparative justice. The UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation distinguish among restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition. A credible Rohingya framework should incorporate all of these rather than presenting a one-off payment as complete justice.
Discriminatory land transfers must be frozen and reviewed
Before claims are adjudicated, a moratorium should be imposed on the transfer, lease, concession, reclassification and allocation of conflict-displaced Rohingya land. Transactions conducted after the 2012 displacement and the 2017 military campaign require independent review.
Any classification of Rohingya property as vacant or unused because its owners were forcibly displaced should be cancelled. Military and corporate concessions should be audited, and fraudulent or unlawfully obtained titles annulled. Decisions of the restitution commission must take precedence over subsequent discriminatory registrations or conflicting administrative allocations.
Private companies cannot be excluded from accountability. The IIMM identified the involvement of corporations, local companies and associated individuals in providing machinery and labour for demolition and construction on seized land. Investigators should disclose which companies received contracts, who their beneficial owners were and what they knew about the origins and use of the land.
Depending on the evidence, responsible companies and individuals could be required to contribute to a restitution fund, face civil liability or targeted sanctions, and be investigated for possible participation in serious international crimes. The private execution of a state contract does not erase responsibility when the work contributes directly to the destruction and appropriation of civilian property.
Responsibility now extends beyond the junta
The political and military geography of northern Arakan is no longer the same as it was in 2017. The Arakan Army and its political wing, the United League of Arakan, exercise de facto control over much of the region, while other areas remain contested. A restitution framework directed exclusively at Myanmar’s military authorities would therefore be detached from present territorial realities.
Whichever authority controls a territory must protect the housing, land and property rights of the population living there. The absence of international recognition does not release a de facto armed authority from its responsibilities toward civilians.
The AA/ULA should provide a clear written recognition of Rohingya identity and of Rohingya rights to village residence, property ownership, citizenship, freedom of movement and participation in local administration. Such commitments are especially necessary given recent documentation of killings, forced labour, arbitrary detention, severe movement restrictions and other abuses against Rohingya civilians in areas affected or controlled by the AA.
Any operational framework must answer several practical questions: who will provide access to land records; who will remove military occupation; who will enforce tribunal decisions; and which security arrangement will protect claimants and returnees? If junta-issued records conflict with new records created under AA/ULA administration, the decision of the independent claims commission should prevail.
A title is meaningless without citizenship and security
Restoring ownership on paper will achieve little if a Rohingya claimant cannot travel to the land, live there, cultivate it, transfer it or seek legal protection against another expulsion. That would amount to paper restitution.
Effective restitution requires citizenship or a secure and equal legal status, freedom of movement, protection from arbitrary arrest, an end to armed checkpoints and paid travel permissions, a prohibition on forced labour, vetting of security personnel, an independent complaints mechanism, humanitarian access and sustained international monitoring.
A stateless person may possess a title certificate but remain unable to register, inherit, transfer or defend the property before a court. Land restitution therefore cannot be separated from citizenship, legal identity and equal protection under the law.
International monitoring will need to continue beyond the initial return process. Satellite imagery can identify new military installations, village demolitions, road construction, settlement expansion and encroachment. Field monitors must also verify transfers of possession, returnee access, intimidation, recognition of women’s ownership and implementation of tribunal decisions.
Monitoring that ends when refugees cross the border would record movement, not durable return.
Repatriation language must be converted into enforceable conditions
Four terms recur in almost every diplomatic statement concerning Rohingya repatriation: safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable. Too often, they function as diplomatic decoration. Land restitution gives each term a concrete meaning.
Safe return means that a person can reach and occupy their land without an armed threat. Voluntary return means that refugees know where they are returning, what has happened to their property and what remedy is available before deciding. Dignified return means they will not be confined indefinitely in camps or transit centres but will return to their ancestral communities as rights-bearing residents. Sustainable return means that they will have homes, agricultural land, livelihoods, social institutions and inheritable rights for future generations.
Without these conditions, the number of people transported across the border may increase, but the Rohingya crisis will not be resolved. Refugees would instead be sent into a territory where their identity remains contested, their land is occupied and their security depends on authorities that are not independently accountable.
The first question concerning Rohingya repatriation is therefore not how many people can be sent back. It is where they will return, under what legal rights and under whose security guarantees.
No repatriation can constitute genuine return without rebuilding villages, establishing an independent claims system, reviewing military and commercial occupation and securing citizenship and freedom of movement.
Returning to one’s homeland means more than crossing a border. It means recovering a recognised and enforceable relationship with the land. Without restitution, repatriation would not resolve displacement. It would construct a new geography of control and confinement for the Rohingya.
References
- Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar. “The Destruction and Dispossession of Rohingya Land and Property During the 2017 Clearance Operations—Public Summary.” 29 September 2025.
- Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar. “Myanmar Mechanism Report Identifies Entities Benefitting from Destruction and Dispossession of Rohingya Land and Property in 2017.” 29 September 2025.
- Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar. “Q&A with Authors of the Land Report.” 2025.
- Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Food and Agriculture Organization. “Handbook on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons: Implementing the Pinheiro Principles.” 2007.
- United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons, E/CN.4/Sub.2/2005/17, 28 June 2005. Reproduced in the OHCHR Pinheiro Principles handbook.
- United Nations General Assembly. “Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law.” Resolution 60/147, 16 December 2005.
- United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Voluntary Repatriation.” Accessed 27 July 2026.
- United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Master Glossary of Terms: Voluntary Repatriation.” Accessed 27 July 2026.
- Norwegian Refugee Council. “The Restitution Gap: Land Rights and Restitution in Myanmar.” 2019.
- Norwegian Refugee Council. “‘Home’ No Longer Exists for Many Rohingya.” 25 August 2021.
- Human Rights Watch. “World Report 2019: Myanmar.” 2019.
- Human Rights Watch. “‘Skeletons and Skulls Scattered Everywhere’: Arakan Army Massacre of Rohingya Muslims in Hoyyar Siri, Myanmar.” 18 May 2026.
- Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. “Situation of Human Rights of Rohingya Muslims and Other Minorities in Myanmar.” Conference Room Paper, 26 September 2025.
- Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. “Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar.” A/HRC/59/57, 26 May 2025.
- Fortify Rights. “Myanmar: Arakan Army Subjecting Ethnic Minorities to Forced Labor.” 22 October 2025.
- Reuters. “Myanmar Army Razed Rohingya Villages to Build Security Outposts, UN-Backed Report Says.” 29 September 2025.
- Rohingya Khobor. “Who Controls Rohingya Land in Northern Arakan?.” 28 June 2026.
Researcher’s bio: A Bangladeshi researcher working on Rohingya rights, displacement, identity, and regional politics.
