Addressing COVID-ified maritime migration in the Bay of Bengal: the case of stateless Rohingya boat people

ABSTRACT

Historically, people have for a long time been using the seas to migrate perilously in unseaworthy boats and risking their lives primarily for safe havens when fleeing persecution or for gaining better economic opportunities in countries of destination. This kind of unsafe migration by sea continues even in the challenging times of countries trying to manage the global pandemic Covid-19. Governing maritime movements is as it is a complex challenge and Covid-19, by raising public health concerns and triggering border-closures across the world, has added to its complexity. Taking the case of Rohingyas, the world’s largest stateless minority who have been trying to seek refuge in Southeast Asian countries by taking perilous journeys through the Bay of Bengal, this article analyses the COVID-ification of migration by sea that has pitted the human rights of non-refoulement and rescue at sea against the sovereign responsibility of states to protect public health of citizenry.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• maritime migration
• stateless people
• Rohingyas

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Tejal Khanna is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her PhD thesis examines the role of UNHCR in assisting Stateless Persons. Previously, she had completed her M.Phil in International Organisation from the same university where she worked for her thesis on the role of EU, NATO and UNODC in countering Somali-Based Piracy. She has also worked as research associate at the National Maritime Foundation, a maritime think tank in New Delhi, India. Her areas of specialisation are: maritime security, international organisations, statelessness and migration.

Notes

1 It is important to note that the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), equipped with the UN given statelessness mandate, has admitted that though the official world’s stateless population figures stand at 3.9 million, these numbers could be much higher and a figure of atleast 10 million is regularly accepted (UNHCR 2020). Although there is no statement by the UNHCR directly stating that Rohingya are the largest stateless group, an in-depth statistical analysis of the annual UNHCR reports on Global trends by the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion showed that Rohingya can be regarded as the largest stateless population in the world (Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion 2019).