Truth & Rights: Statelessness, Human Rights, and the Rohingya

By: Patrick Balazo

Abstract - The Rohingya people are a stateless Muslim community that live within the borders of
Myanmar. This paper presents the gross human rights violations they have experienced and unveils a
paradox in international law concerning state sovereignty that prevents them from claiming their right to a
nationality and simultaneously prevents the international community from coming to their aid. This paper
examines the plight of the Rohingya people using a specific conceptual framework of statelessness and it
concludes that the inaction of the international community has caused their circumstances to worsen.

Résumé - Les Rohinya sont une communauté musulmane apatride qui vit à l’intérieur de Myanmar. Ce
papier présente les violations des droits humains qu’ils ont subies et dévoile un paradoxe dans le droit
international concernant la souveraineté d’un état, ce qui les empêche de revendiquer leur droit à une
nationalité et bloque simultanément l’aide de la communauté internationale. Ce papier examine la
situation difficile des Rohinya en utilisant un cadre conceptuel spécifique de l’apatridie. Il conclut que
l’inaction de la communauté internationale a aggravé leur situation.

INTRODUCTION

State sovereignty is paramount where it concerns international relations. Yet, for the Rohingya
people of Myanmar, state sovereignty is a double sided iron veil that keeps them in legal shadows as a
stateless people and simultaneously precludes the international community from bearing any
responsibility in defending their human rights. The thesis of this paper uses a conceptual framework of
statelessness to investigate the plight of the Rohingya people of Myanmar, drawing attention to the
gross human rights violations that this group suffers as a result of their statelessness. The importance of
such work lies in the fact that the dearth of academic literature regarding the plight of the Rohingya and
the human rights violations they have been subjected to is written with a focus on the concept of
statelessness in general, where the Rohingya serve merely as an example to this end. This thesis
provides a more specific and in depth analysis of the case of the Rohingya people. The paper highlights
how the suffering of the Rohingya has continued to escalate despite multiple international instruments
designed to offer stateless peoples redress, and though evidence of the desperate conditions under
which the Rohingya live is widely available, the international community is both unwilling and unable to
act; an inaction that some commentators have characterized a “slow genocide” (The Sentinel Project,
2013, p. 36).

WHO ARE THE ROHINGYA

The Rohingya people are a stateless Muslim ethnic minority living in what is now Myanmar’s
northwestern Rakhine state (historically referred to as Arakan). Today, they comprise over thirty percent
of the state’s population, while their total numbers in Myanmar exceed two million (Parnini, Othman &
Ghazali, 2013). Holliday (2010) argues that the Rohingya may be “the most distinctive of Myanmar’s
many ethnic groups” (p. 121), with their religion, social customs and physical features setting them apart
from the majority of Burmese society.

It is during the fifteenth century that the people now known as the Rohingya began to figure
prominently in the region’s history. In 1404, then king of Arakan Narmeikhla waged an attack on
neighbouring Burma, and upon his defeat sought refuge in the court of the Muslim Bengali ruler
Jalaluddin Shah (Oberoi, 2006, p. 172; Karim, 2000, p. 15). In 1430, Jalaluddin Shah’s forces reinstated
Narmeikhla as the ruler of Arakan, cementing the influence Islam was to have on Arakan’s future (Oberoi,
2006, p. 172; Jilani, 2001, p. 15; Karim, 2000, p. 15).

6 Undercurrent Journal Volume XI, Issue I: Fall/Winter 2015

 Arakan remained an independent Islamic kingdom until 1784 when Bodawpaya, the king of
neighbouring Burma, conquered Arakan and incorporated it into his kingdom (Ahmed, 2010; Bahar,
2010; Oberoi, 2006). This event also marked the first mass exodus of Muslims from Arakan to Bengal
(Bangladesh), with some 200,000 Muslims taking flight (Bahar, 2010; Oberoi, 2006). By 1798, two-thirds
of Arakan’s population had deserted their native land (Jilani, 2001, p. 70).

While this is indeed a dark chapter in the history of Arakan, an event that occurred the following
year is of invaluable importance: the publication of Francis Buchanan’s A Comparative Vocabulary of
Some of the Languages Spoken in the Burma Empire. It is within this survey that the name Rohingya first
emerges:

“I shall now add three dialects, spoken in the Burma Empire, but evidently derived from the
language of the Hindu nation. The first is that spoken by the Mohammedans, who have long
settled in Arakan, and who call themselves Rooinga, or natives of Arakan.” (Buchanan &
Charney, 2003, p. 55)

Published in 1799, Buchanan’s work is the first recording of the endonym Rohingya (Rooinga). Before
Buchanan’s work was published, Arakanese Muslims had never been identified in the written record as
“Rohingya,” and though there is no absolute evidence as to when and where this endonym first
emerged, it should be understood that the Muslims of Arakan discussed above are in fact the same
group who would later identify themselves as the Rohingya.

Bodawpaya’s rule and that of his successor remained largely unchallenged until the arrival of the
British (Yegar, 1972, p. 12). Beginning in 1824, a force led by General Joseph Watson Morrison and
another led by Sir Archibald Campbell moved on Arakan, and by 24 February 1826 with the signing of
the Treaty of Yandabo, Arakan became a British Territory (Jilani, 2001, pp. 74-75).

British control meant stability, and many Rohingya who had fled to Bangladesh began returning
to their homes (Bahar, 2010, p. 107; Jilani, 2001, p. 76). As well, Arakan’s first civil ruler under the British,
Robertson, encouraged farmers from neighbouring Bengal (Bangladesh) to settle in Arakan so as to
increase the production of agricultural commodities for export (Karim, 2000, p. 108). Unfortunately, this
movement of Bengali farmers into Arakan obscures the Rohingya’s historical presence in the region, and
a number of subsequent events worked to further dispossess the Rohingya of their heritage.

The second and third Anglo-Burmese wars saw the whole of Burma come under British rule, and
with that Burma was designated as a province of India (Yegar, 1972, p. 29). Large numbers of Indians
entered Burma in numbers exceeding 1 million during the British occupation, much to the detriment of
the indigenous Rohingya population (Yegar, 1972, p. 31). The colonial tradition of order, quantification
and codification meant that the Rohingya became legally categorized as “Indian Muslims” (Bahar, 2010,
p. 108), and as such their historical legacy in Arakan was trivialized.

Tensions between Burma’s Buddhist and Muslim communities were first exposed in 1930 and
again in 1938 with the advent of the “anti-Indian riots” (Bahar, 2010, p. 108). Under colonial rule, many
Burmese felt as though they were being dispossessed of their land and that they did not have the same
social and economic opportunities as their Indian counterparts. During the riots of 1938, Burmese
nationalists warned the colonial government that “steps would be taken…to bring about the
extermination of the Muslims and the extinction of their religion” (Yegar, 1972, p. 36) if their concerns
were not addressed. Of course, with the Rohingya being understood as Indian Muslims, they were not
spared from these sentiments, and it is during this period that their collective persecution had begun to
intensify.

On 4 January 1948, Burma achieved its independence from Britain and became an independent
sovereign state (Tinker, 1967, p. 1) with the British leaving power in the hands of the Anti-Fascist
People’s Freedom League (AFPFL). What matters most is that under the leadership of prime minister U

7
Nu and the AFPFL, the Rohingya were recognized as citizens of Burma (Lay, 2009, p. 57). General Ne
Win’s 1962 coup d’état changed all of that however, for Ne Win declared the Rohingya to be “Indian
Bengalis” who came to Burma with the British during the first Anglo-Burmese War, a position that has
since become the official state line despite its historical inaccuracy (Bahar, 2010, pp. 109-110; Than &
Thuzar, 2012, p. 4). Ne Win ordered authorities in Arakan to restrict the Rohingya’s movement, outlawed
Rohingya associations and organizations, and cancelled all Rohingya language programming (Jilani,
2002, pp. 70-71).

In 1974, the passing of the Emergency Immigration Act informally stripped the Rohingya of their
Burmese nationality by supplanting their national registration certificates with foreign registration cards
(Cheung, 2011, p. 51; Ahmed, 2010, p. 51). 1978’s Operation Naga Min (Operation Dragon King) was
launched to “scrutinize each individual living in the state…taking action against foreigners who [had]
filtered into the country illegally” (Oberoi, 2006, pp. 174-175), with the country’s Rohingya population
being specifically targeted. This campaign was followed by widespread violence against the Rohingya
and some 200,000 fled to Bangladesh (Cheung, 2011; Ullah, 2011; Ahmed, 2010; Oberoi, 2006; Jilani,
2002). On 15 October 1982, the new Citizenship Act was passed rendering the Rohingya officially
stateless and placing them outside of Burma’s 135 ethnic groups located within the country’s eight
“national races” (Holliday, 2010, p. 118; Parnini, Othman, & Ghazali, 2013, p. 134). In 1990, Operation Pyi
Thaya (Operation Prosperous Country) was launched, and the Rohingya were subjected to forced
resettlement, forced labour, extortion, torture, rape and killings at the hands of the state, causing another
270,000 refugees to flee to Bangladesh (Oberoi, 2006, p. 180). It would be another twenty years until
violence of this degree flared up again, and between June and October 2012 nearly 8,000 Rohingya
homes were torched, 31 mosques were destroyed, and 140,000 Rohingya were left displaced in
response to reports that 3 Rohingya men had raped a Rakhine woman (Kipgen, 2013, pp. 4-7;
International Crisis Group, 2013, p. i).

ON STATELESSNESS

Statelessness is a contravention of both human dignity and humanity’s inalienable rights. Having
a nationality is one of the most basic of rights guaranteed to all members of the human family under the
United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). As Article 15 of the UDHR states: “(1)
Everyone has the right to a nationality;” and “(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor
denied the right to change his nationality” (United Nations, 2007). However, in the sixty-six years since
the adoption of the UDHR, the inalienable rights espoused by Article 15 have not become universal in
scope, and it is currently estimated that there are approximately 12 million stateless peoples worldwide
(Staples, 2012, p. ix). This signals an intrinsic deficiency on the part of the UDHR, and one that applies
explicitly to the stateless.

In her analysis of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Arendt (1973) argues
that the “inalienable” rights of man (human rights) are concomitant with national emancipation, and
“whenever people appeared who were no longer citizens of any sovereign state” (p. 293), these
supposed rights “proved to be unenforceable” (p. 293). In other words, to be without a state is to exist
as “an anomaly for whom there is no appropriate niche in the framework of the general law” (Jermings as
cited in Arendt, p. 283, 1973), losing both the legal protection of the state system and an officially
recognized identity before the law. Assuming that human rights are in fact inalienable, it would follow
that he who has become stateless would be the foremost beneficiary of said rights by virtue of his
humanity, but because these rights are contingent on one’s political status as a citizen, “a man who is
nothing but a man” (Arendt, 1973, p. 300) loses that which makes it possible for others to treat him as
such. Following this logic, nationality is fundamentally “the right to have rights” (van Waas, 2008, p. 217;
Weissbrodt, 2008, p. 81). Through the loss of nationality and citizenship, and therefore the means
through which any guarantee of human rights can be actualized, the human being is reduced to a state
of bare existence, an existence that is itself the ultimate expression of precariousness.

8 Undercurrent Journal Volume XI, Issue I: Fall/Winter 2015

 Though the stateless are placed outside the apparatus of the international state system because
of their political non-status, this collective non-status in turn exposes them to all manner of state
violence. The reduction to an existence without political status does relieve the stateless of all rights and
privileges, but in this process the relationship between the state and the stateless is re-articulated, not
abandoned. Agamben (1998) refers to this state of existence as “bare life” (p. 10), wherein “the simple
fact of living common to all living beings” (p. 9) is still in fact recognized by the political realm. Central to
Agamben’s conception of bare life is an arcane figure derived from Roman law: “homo sacer, (sacred
man), who may be killed and yet not sacrificed” (p. 12). Homo sacer represents “a life that may be killed
by anyone -- an object of a violence that exceeds the sphere both of law and of sacrifice” (p. 54) for he
has been forcibly removed from the political community, reduced to bare life, and placed beyond the
protection of divine law as understood by the Romans. Agamben states that in the modern political
sphere of national sovereignty “a zone of indistinction between sacrifice and homicide” (p. 53) is formed,
and in this sphere the sovereign “is permitted to kill without committing homicide and without
celebrating a sacrifice” (p. 53). However, although it has departed from all notions of divinity, the modern
system of national sovereignty has retained the figure of homo sacer in that one can be forcibly placed
outside the political community, wherein the sovereign is potentially free to kill without transgression.
According to Agamben, it is the capture of bare life and homo sacer within the political order on which
the entire political system rests. In other words, sovereign power maintains itself in relation to bare life “in
an inclusive exclusion” (p. 12), a form of recognition that for Agamben constitutes the nucleus of all
sovereign power. Ultimately, the modern sovereign order necessitates the existence of that which it is
not to delineate its own existence, creating both the fact of bare life and the conditions in which the
unbridled exercise of power over bare life is necessarily sanctioned (Agamben, 1998). Tragically, this is
the very situation in which the stateless person is in.

When denied one’s citizenship and nationality, the stateless person descends into a state of bare
life, unable to secure any semblance of rights, guilty of existence, and confined to and exploited by the
very system of which they are no longer a part. Without the right to have rights, the stateless have no
means through which they can seek justice, and it is in this space that the state exercises absolute
power and control over the stateless. This paradox cannot be overstated, and is repeatedly revealed
through the many international instruments designed to provide the stateless with redress. The
Rohingya’s descent into a state of bare life and the subsequent tribulation this group encounters are
real-world examples of the issues raised by both Arendt and Agamben, and the specificities of their
plight will now be outlined in order to proceed.

Though the Rohingya were recognized as citizens in Myanmar’s 1948 Constitution (Lay, 2009, p.
57; Yegar, 1972, p. 75), the passing of the 1982 Burma Citizenship Law repealed the Constitution’s
attendant Union Citizenship Act that designated the Rohingya as citizens (Aung, 2007, p. 272; Working
People’s Daily, 1982). Under the new law, if one were able to provide the state with “conclusive evidence
of their lineage” (Ullah, 2011, p. 149) in Myanmar as predating 1823, citizenship would theoretically be
granted. However, the aforementioned 1974 Emergency Immigration Act meant that most Rohingya were
officially documented as being foreign to Myanmar, and when coupled with repeated flight, internal
displacement, and the outright confiscation of identification, the Rohingya were left largely unable to
provide documentary evidence of their historical presence in the country. Further, in concert with the
passing of this law was the codification of Myanmar’s eight national races (Holliday, 2010, p. 118), in
which the Rohingya were not included. As a result, the Rohingya were officially stripped of their Burmese
citizenship and the onus was placed on them to prove to the state that they were eligible for one of the
three tiers of citizenship.

When considering these factors, it can be understood how the Rohingya have been rendered
stateless. The particularities of the 1982 Citizenship Law both deny the Rohingya citizenship and prevent
them from ever attaining it. Key to all of this is the official state line that the Rohingya are in fact illegal
Indian Bengali migrants, a position that prolongs and further entrenches the Rohingya’s collective status
as stateless. Even if a Rohingya man or woman were to present conclusive evidence of their historical
presence in Myanmar, “those who apply for the [sic] citizenship are subjected to scrutiny by…the Central

9
Body” (Myanmar President Office, 2013, para. 36), the same Central Body responsible for rendering the
Rohingya stateless. Under these circumstances, the granting of citizenship to Myanmar’s Rohingya
population amounts to little more than an illusion. Ultimately, the Citizenship Law is a well-crafted
encapsulation of the ethno-nationalist vision espoused by the country’s Burman elite, a law that allows
for the complete and utter violation of the Rohingya’s human rights. However, there is one mechanism
through which the Rohingya can garner legal recognition, and attention must now be placed on the key
legal document pertaining to statelessness, the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless
Persons.

THE RIGHTS OF THE STATELESS

Adopted in 1954 and put into force in 1960, the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of
Stateless Persons is the most comprehensive codification of the rights of the stateless, providing a
framework for the international protection of stateless persons (United Nations, 2010). The Convention
lays out minimum standards of treatment for those who “qualify as stateless persons” (UN, 2010, p. 3),
addressing matters of religion, education, freedom of movement, identity, expulsion, assimilation, and
naturalization. Comprised of 42 Articles and grounded in the consideration “that it is desirable to
regulate and improve the status of stateless persons by an international agreement” (UN, 2010, p. 5), the
Convention currently has 23 signatories and 80 parties, and its enforcement is the responsibility of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (United Nations Treaty Collection, 2014a).

Due to their vulnerability, there is obvious need for an international framework to protect the
stateless. But, just as human rights fall short of protecting these people, so too does the very convention
designed with the intent of protecting them. Evidence of the Convention’s shortcomings first arises in the
document’s preamble where it is stated that the rights guaranteed by the Convention are only to be
afforded to those who “qualify as stateless persons” (UN, 2010, p. 3). This is problematic because the
Convention does not provide guidelines as to how a state should qualify a person as stateless, instead
leaving it to the discretion of the state in question. This means that under the guise of the Convention,
not only are the stateless burdened with the task of negotiating an inconsistent legal framework, but the
prospects for an internationally harmonized approach and solution to the repercussions of statelessness
are poor (van Waas, 2008, p. 228).

The plight of the stateless is further compounded by Article 7 (1) of the Convention where it is
stated that: “Except where this Convention contains more favourable provisions, a Contracting State
shall accord to stateless persons the same treatment as is accorded to aliens generally” (UN, 2010, p. 8).
However, only those who are lawfully present or lawfully resident are privy to this treatment (van Waas,
2008; Blitz & Lynch, 2011; Staples, 2012). Not only is this is a great difficulty for the person in question in
that they must “prove a negative” (Blitz & Lynch, 2011, p. 37) in proving their statelessness, it effectively
allows human rights protocols to fall under the discretion of a given state, thereby undermining the
purpose of this instrument in its entirety.

The 1954 Convention raises another issue, namely that of a “hidden exclusion clause” (Blitz &
Lynch, 2011, p. 27). Because states are “free to set the conditions for entry and residence of aliens (Blitz
& Lynch, 2011, p. 27), the stateless are at once denied the right to stay and leave, wherein they may
become stuck between the sovereign will of two states, spending years in detention (Staples, 2012;
Weissbrodt, 2008).

Further, not only is it the sovereign right of each state to determine who its citizens are (Staples,
2012, p. 19) the state itself “is constructed through power” (Redclift, 2013, p.33). Key to this power is the
state’s capacity “to categorise differently and hierarchically, to set aside by setting apart, and to exclude
from state protection” (Redclift, 2013, p. 33). To exercise unconstrained power over the stateless then is
a natural expression of state sovereignty, and while it may be at the expense of human dignity (Staples,
2012, p. 18), it is at the very least condoned and in accordance with the same Convention that seeks to
uphold the human rights of stateless persons.

10 Undercurrent Journal Volume XI, Issue I: Fall/Winter 2015

 THE CASE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

Recent developments in and proposed solutions to resolving the Rohingya’s collective

statelessness are divided among two camps: what Myanmar can do to end the crisis and what the
international community can do to help bring an end to the crisis. This section will address how the
international community can help Myanmar move forward. A definite solution to ending the Rohingya’s
statelessness will not be proposed. However, by outlining what is happening at the international level, a
portrait of what is possible is provided so as to delineate what may or may not happen in the future.

Though it was not explicitly concerned with the Rohingya or the issue of statelessness, on 12
January 2007 both the United Kingdom and the United States presented the UN Security Council with a
draft resolution on Myanmar (International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect, 2014). The
resolution called on the Government of Myanmar to offer unhindered access to humanitarian
organizations; to cooperate fully with the International Labour Organization; to make concrete progress
towards democracy; and to release all political prisoners (ICRtoP, 2014). The resolution did receive
overwhelming support, but China and Russia used their powers to veto the resolution arguing that the
violence in Myanmar did not constitute a threat to international peace and security, and that the matter
was an internal affair of a sovereign state (Parnini, 2013, p. 291; United Nations Security Council, 2007,
para. 4). However, of greater concern is that the notion of state sovereignty was used to prevent
international intervention in Myanmar. This is particularly worrying in the sense that sovereignty already
provides states with an absolute right to determine who its citizens are. When that same sovereignty is
then used to justify violence against a state’s own citizens, let alone against those not recognized by the
state, a dangerous precedent is set. The end result is that the stateless are further deprived of having a
voice in an international legal framework that essentially condones acts of violence perpetrated against
them.

Another recent, real-world attempt to resolve the Rohingya issue is the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) adoption of the Bali Process with regard to the Rohingya. During 2009’s 14th
ASEAN summit in Thailand (ASEAN, 2012), the Rohingya issue was made a “sideline” concern, kept
from the official agenda of the summit but discussed nonetheless (Lay, 2009, p. 58). Leaders of the
ASEAN countries agreed the Rohingya issue was of regional concern, and it was brought under the Bali
Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking and Related Transnational Crime (Ahmed, 2010, p. 133).
Rather than falling back on human rights mechanisms embedded within ASEAN’s charter such as Article
1: Section 7’s promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the Bali Process
turns the Rohingya issue into a matter of national security, and as such the human rights and protections
needs of the Rohingya are rendered obsolete (Ahmed, 2010, p. 133; ASEAN, 2008, p. 4; Cheung, 2011,
pp. 64-65). This move towards the Rohingya as a security issue was later confirmed in October 2012
during the violence that erupted in Rakhine state when Surin Pitsuwan, Secretary General of ASEAN,
warned that violence could radicalize the Rohingya and threaten peace and stability in the region
(Kipgen, 2013, p. 8). Despite this worrying claim, the Rohingya issue went without mention at two
ASEAN ministerial meetings in 2013 (Ganjanakhundee, 2013), and with Myanmar becoming Chair of
ASEAN in 2014, it is unlikely the Rohingya will get the attention they deserve from this body.

In March 2010, slightly less than a year after ASEAN’s adoption of the Bali Process, UN Special
Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar Tomas Ojea Quintana called for a UN-mandated commission of
inquiry into human rights violations being committed in Myanmar (Parnini, 2013, p. 292). Since making
this recommendation, the governments of Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France,
Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Slovakia, the United Kingdom, and the
United States have all given their support to the establishment of a commission of inquiry (Parnini, 2013,
p. 292). If it were to be completed, ASEAN and other regional governments would then have the
increased leverage needed to pressure the Government of Myanmar to make genuine political reforms
and end the continued violation of human rights in the country (Parnini, 2013, p. 292). However, during a
visit to Rakhine state in August of 2013, Quintana’s presence was met with violent protest (Rohingya
Blogger, 2013, para. 4). Such hostilities would not prevent a commission of inquiry from being

11
completed, but are a worrying indication of the need for such a commission. Since this visit,
humanitarian assistance to the Rohingya community in Rakhine state has been temporarily suspended in
some regions due to the harassment and intimidation of aid workers, and the blocking of access to
camps where internally displaced Rohingya men, women and children are housed (Rohingya Blogger,
2014, para. 8). Again, these events do not mean that a commission of inquiry cannot be established, but
signal both the degree of hostility under which such a commission would be carried out and the
immediacy with which it must be done.

A final real-world example of what has recently been done to resolve the Rohingya issue can be
taken from members of the international community who have agreed to resettle documented Rohingya
refugees from Bangladesh. Since 2006, a total of 920 recognized Rohingya refugees have been resettled
in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the  United
States (Azad & Jasmin, 2013). This is an incredible development, but it is worth considering whether this
third country resettlement honours the wishes of Myanmar’s President Thein Sein who has stated that “if
there are countries that would accept [the Rohingya], they could be sent there” (UNHCR, 2013, para. 6).
Of course, the resettlement of 920 Rohingya between eight countries should hardly be seen as President
Sein’s plan coming to fruition, but it does highlight the overwhelming complexity of resolving this issue.
As well, it should be noted that only those Rohingya who are recognized as refugees in Bangladesh are
permitted to apply for resettlement, and though it is an incredible opportunity to start life anew for those
who are eligible, this option falls extremely short of providing a solution for all the Rohingya who are not
among those counted by the UNHCR’s operations in Bangladesh.

Elsewhere in the international realm, theorists have proposed a variety of solutions to overcome
the impasse surrounding the Rohingya issue. Perhaps most radical is Gibney’s (2013) discussion of
extraterritorial obligations, an approach that mirrors the Responsibility to Protect. Through this approach,
the international community assumes the task of protecting the economic, social and cultural rights of
persons when the state is unable or unwilling to do so. However, the problem with Gibney’s approach is
threefold. First, moral obligations may very well be used as a pre-text for military intervention. Second,
the Extraterritorial Obligations Human Rights Consortium (ETO) charged with promoting these principles
only published said principles in 2013. Lastly, these principles may amount to little more than another list
of rules to be followed, or not.

CONCLUSION

Reverting back to this thesis’ introduction, it is quite apparent that the suffering of the Rohingya
has continued to escalate despite a multitude of international instruments designed to offer stateless
peoples redress, and though evidence of the desperate conditions under which the Rohingya live is
widely available, the international community is both unwilling and unable to act.

As we have seen, the Rohingya have a long history in what is now Myanmar’s Rakhine state, at
one time claiming the same soil as the independent kingdom of Arakan. In 1982, Burmese nationalists
were successful in stripping the Rohingya of their Burmese citizenship, and in so doing rendered the
Rohingya non-citizen resident foreigners. Since this time, the Rohingya’s legal non-status has effectively
enabled the perpetration of human rights violations against them, and tragically, with no resolution in
sight.

To be sure, there have been international efforts to bring an end to the displacement and human
rights violations the Rohingya seem almost destined to endure. Yet, those actors who have sought to
address human rights violations have only been able to secure non-binding resolutions or have had their
efforts impeded by the all-encompassing rhetoric of statelessness’ troubling bedfellow, sovereignty.

Still, the most pressing matter is the denial of the right to a nationality, the key human rights
violation experienced by the Rohingya. So as long as it is the sovereign right of each state to determine
who its citizens are, there is absolutely no reason for Myanmar or any other country to include the

12 Undercurrent Journal Volume XI, Issue I: Fall/Winter 2015

Rohingya as part of its national community. Tragically, state sovereignty also reduces the Universal
Declaration on Human Rights and the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons to little
more than paper tigers, and when the most comprehensive legal documents pertaining to the rights of
the stateless are neutralized, an impasse on how to address statelessness takes hold.

The recent resettlement of Rohingya refugees to various Western nations has provided those
fortunate enough to be classified as refugees and selected for resettlement with a future they would
have otherwise been unable to secure. However, this could be invoked to justify the Burmese
Government’s calls for third country resettlement, and should be approached with caution.

As both Arendt (1973) and Agamben (1998) have shown, sovereignty ultimately trumps any
attempt to remedy statelessness. Citizenship is the right to have rights, and once it has been lost the
stateless have no means of pursuing legal recourse for any affront committed against them. In other
words, once one is not recognized as the national of any state, they are afforded no guarantees by the
state and yet are exposed to all manner of violence and control by the state. This is how sovereignty is
ultimately actualized. It is in this space that the Rohingya dwell, made to be everyone’s concern yet no
one’s responsibility, and as long as our current conception of sovereignty persists, so too will the
statelessness of the Rohingya.

13
 REFERENCES

Agamben, G. (1998). Homo Sacer. Sovereign power and bare life. California: Stanford University Press.
Ahmed, I. (2010). The plight of stateless Rohingyas: Responses of the state, society & the international
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