Environmental responsibility and Rohingya refugees: potential grounds for justice

ABSTRACT

In response to extreme violence by Myanmar, over one million Rohingya refugees have flooded into Bangladesh, resulting in massive scale deforestation, land erosion, farmland degradation, and destruction of animal habitat, along with the Rohingya being denied basic environmental protections. Because neither Bangladesh nor the Rohingya are responsible for this environmental calamity, a variety of environmental legal claims can be raised against Myanmar, serving as grounds for proper redress to both the receiving state and the refugees therein. This paper highlights the emergence of environmental law as a basis for finding a sending state liable for the environmental impact and damage that it has caused to the receiving state and refugees due to the creation of a refugee crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Rohingya
• Bangladesh
• Myanmar
• refugees
• environmental damage
• environmental responsibility

Disclosure statement

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