Protecting the world's most persecuted: the responsibility to protect and Burma's Rohingya minority

Abstract

The Rohingya in Burma have been called ‘the world's most persecuted minority' and subjected to pervasive human rights violations, including ethnic cleansing, statelessness and possibly genocide. Despite the international community's commitment to the responsibility to protect (R2P), which includes violence prevention, the plight of vulnerable populations such as the Rohingya has been relatively ignored. This article encourages dialogue about the R2P's potential for preventing direct and structural violence, building on its foundation of sovereignty as responsibility. While preventative action to assist the Rohingya comes with an array of challenges, the normative foundations of R2P – including connections to combatting internal displacement and ‘unbundling' protection to challenge structural inequalities – provide a toolkit of responses apart from military force. It is imperative that scholars and practitioners alike critically consider the practical value of R2P, as well as re-examine glaring and overlooked cases of widespread human rights abuse. In addition to thwarting mass atrocities and preventing future violence, further consideration of ongoing structural violence is also necessary for protecting basic human rights.

Keywords:

• responsibility to protect
• Burma
• Rohingya
• statelessness
• forced displacement
• violence prevention

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Lindsey Kingston is an Assistant Professor of International Human Rights at Webster University in Saint Louis, USA. She directs the university's Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies, which includes its undergraduate programme in human rights. A topical expert on the issue of statelessness, much of Kingston's work investigates the connections between legal status and the protection of basic human rights. She has conducted fieldwork in locations such as Rwanda, the Canadian Arctic, Eastern Europe and Brazil. She is an editor for Human Rights Review and holds a PhD from Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Notes

1 Peter Popham, ‘No End in Sight to the Sufferings of “the World's Most Persecuted Minority” – Burma's Rohingya Muslims’, The Independent, 8 October 2012, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/no-end-in-sight-to-the-sufferings-of-the-worlds-most-persecuted-minority--burmas-rohingya-muslims-8202784.html (accessed 21 January 2015).

2 The country's military-led government officially changed the state's name from ‘Burma' to ‘Myanmar' in 1989, but the author continues to use the term ‘Burma' in solidarity with Burmese human rights advocates and the country's pro-democracy movement.

3 Jared Ferrie, ‘Obama Calls on Myanmar to Protect Rohingya; Suu Kyi Urges Harmony’, Reuters, 14 November 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/14/us-myanmar-usa-rohingya-idUSKCN0IY0VN20141114 (accessed 21 January 2015).

4 Greg Constantine, Exiled to Nowhere: Burma's Rohingya (Nowhere People, 2012).

5 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect (December 2001), http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/ICISS%20Report-1.pdf (accessed 31 January 2015), xi–xii.

6 United Nations General Assembly, ‘2005 World Summit Outcome’, 15 September 2005, http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/world%20summit%20outcome%20doc%202005%281%29.pdf (accessed 31 January 2015).

7 Roberta Cohen, ‘Humanitarian Imperatives are Transforming Sovereignty’, Northwestern Journal of International Affairs (Winter 2008), http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2008/01/winter-humanitarian-cohen (accessed 17 January 2015).

8 Roberta Cohen and Francis M. Deng, Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), 275–6.

9 Gareth Evans, The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008).

10 Ramesh Thakur, The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 251.

11 Anne Orford, International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 26.

12 ICSS, The Responsibility to Protect.

13 Alex J. Bellamy, ‘Conflict Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect’, Global Governance 13 (2008): 135–56, at 139–40.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., 142.

16 Ibid., 147.

17 Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas in Action, Second Edition (Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press, 2012), 113, 103.

18 Lawrence Woocher, ‘The Responsibility to Prevent: Toward a Strategy', in The Routledge Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect, ed. W. Andy Knight and Frazer Egerton (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 22–35, 22.

19 United Nations General Assembly, ‘Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Report of the Secretary-General’, 12 January 2009, http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/implementing%20the%20rtop.pdf (accessed 17 January 2015), 8.

20 United Nations General Assembly Security Council, ‘Responsibility to Protect: State Responsibility and Prevention, Report of the Secretary-General', 9 July 2013, http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/67/929 (accessed 17 January 2015).

21 Ibid., 4–5.

22 Woocher, ‘The Responsibility to Prevent', 28–30.

23 John G. Heidenrich, How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen (Westport: Praeger, 2001).

24 Brian Knowlton, ‘Panel Urges Creation of Genocide Alert System’, The New York Times, 8 November 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/world/americas/08iht-genocide.4.18497285.html (accessed 17 January 2015).

25 Ibid., 9.

26 Johan Galtung and Tord Ho˘ivik, ‘Structural and Direct Violence: A Note on Operationalization’, Journal of Peace Research 8, no. 1 (1971): 73–6, at 73.

27 George Kent, ‘Children as Victims of Structural Violence’, Societies Without Borders 1 (2006): 53–67, at 55.

28 Al Jazeera, ‘UN Calls for “Full Rohingya Citizenship”’, 30 December 2014, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/12/un-calls-full-rohingya-citizenship-myanmar-monks-rakhin-2014123044246726211.html (accessed 17 January 2015).

29 Human Rights Watch, ‘All You Can Do is Pray’: Crimes against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma's Arakan State (2013), http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/burma0413webwcover_0.pdf (accessed 15 January 2015), 109–13.

30 Human Rights Watch, ‘Burma: Government Plan Would Segregate Rohingya’, 2 October 2014, http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/03/burma-government-plan-would-segregate-rohingya (accessed 16 January 2015).

31 Human Rights Watch, ‘Burma's Rohingya Plan is a “Blueprint for Segregation”’, 5 October 2014, http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/05/burmas-rohingya-plan-blueprint-segregation (accessed 16 January 2015).

32 Al Jazeera, ‘UN Calls for ‘Full Rohingya Citizenship”'.

33 Roméo Dallaire, ‘The Very Real Prospect of Genocide in Burma’, Global Brief, 24 March 2014, http://globalbrief.ca/romeo-dallaire/2014/03/24/the-very-real-prospect-of-genocide-in-burma/ (accessed 16 January 2015).

34 Human Rights Watch, ‘All You Can Do is Pray’, 11.

35 Ibid., 12.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid., 15.

38 Amie Hamling, ‘Rohingya: The Most Persecuted Refugees in the World’, Amnesty International Australia, 13 August 2014, http://www.amnesty.org.au/refugees/comments/35290/ (accessed 17 January 2015).

39 Jane Perlez, ‘For Myanmar Muslim Minority, No Escape from Brutality’, The New York Times, 14 March 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/world/asia/trapped-between-home-and-refuge-burmese-muslims-are-brutalized.html?_r=0 (accessed 17 January 2015).

40 Jason Szep and Andrew R.C. Marshall, ‘Special Report: Thailand Secretly Dumps Myanmar Refugees into Trafficking Rings’, Reuters, 5 December 2013, http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/05/uk-thailand-rohingya-special-report-idUKBRE9B400920131205 (accessed 17 January 2015).

41 Amnesty International, ‘Urgent Action: Rohingya Activist Conditionally Released’, 8 October 2014, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA16/024/2014/en/0d227d34-033e-4949-ae11-2fbd774e10df/asa160242014en.pdf (accessed 19 January 2015).

42 Amnesty International, ‘Annual Report 2013: Myanmar’, http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/myanmar/report-2013 (accessed 19 January 2015).

43 International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect, ‘Burma Resolution in Security Council, Vetoed by Russia and China: Implications for RtoP', http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/index.php/crises/128-the-crisis-in-burma/793-burma-resolution-in-security-council-vetoed-by-russia-and-china-implications-for-r2p (accessed 31 January 2015).

44 International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, ‘Myanmar: Cyclone Nargis 2008 Facts and figures’, 3 May 2011, http://www.ifrc.org/en/news-and-media/news-stories/asia-pacific/myanmar/myanmar-cyclone-nargis-2008-facts-and-figures/ (accessed 19 January 2015).

45 Ramesh Thakur, The Responsibility to Protect: Norms, Laws and the Use of Force in International Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 152–3.

46 Alex J. Bellamy and Catherine Drummond, ‘Southeast Asia: Between Non-interference and Sovereignty as Responsibility’, in The Routledge Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect, ed. W. Andy Knight and Frazer Egerton (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 245–56, at 252.

47 Human Rights Watch, ‘All You Can Do is Pray’, 132–5.

48 Alex J. Bellamy, Massacres and Morality: Mass Atrocities in an Age of Civilian Immunity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3.

49 Luke Glanville, ‘The International Community's Responsibility to Protect’, in Protecting the Displaced: Deepening the Responsibility to Protect, ed. Sara E. Davies and Luke Glanville (Leiden and Boston, MA: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2010), 185–204, at 204.

50 Roberta Cohen, ‘Reconciling R2P with IDP Protection’, in Protecting the Displaced: Deepening the Responsibility to Protect, ed. Sara E. Davies and Luke Glanville (Leiden and Boston, MA: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2010), 35–57, at 40–1.

51 Ibid., 41–9.

52 Erin D. Mooney, ‘Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed … Something Blue? The Protection Potential of a Marriage of Concepts between R2P and IDP Protection’, in Protecting the Displaced: Deepening the Responsibility to Protect, ed. Sara E. Davies and Luke Glanville (Leiden and Boston, MA: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2010), 59–84, 68–9, 64.

53 Cohen, ‘Reconciling R2P with IDP Protection’, 51–2.

54 Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock, ‘R2P: A New and Unfinished Agenda’, Global Responsibility to Protect 1 (2009): 54–69, 64–65.

55 Lindsey N. Kingston and Saheli Datta, ‘Strengthening the Norm of Global Responsibility: Structural Violence in Relation to Internal Displacement and Statelessness’, Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012): 475–504, at 484.

56 Ibid., 496.

 

57 It is important to note that genocide occurs in cases of mass-scale killing, as well as instances where the number of deaths is relatively low. Rather than using body counts as a litmus test for identifying acts of genocide, Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts committed ‘with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'. This includes acts such as: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction of the group in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. See: United Nations General Assembly, ‘Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’, 9 December 1948, https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I-1021-English.pdf (accessed 11 February 2015).