Even the worst in humanitarian disasters can get lost in today’s media deluge. With the Middle East still not quite done with the Syrian conflict, superpower competition between the U.S., Russia, and China, scandals from Kavanaugh to Khashoggi, the competition for air time is fierce. Since coming to light one year ago, the plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar has at several times nearly slipped through the media cracks. Nearly.
The latest report from the United Nations on the widespread crisis came on 24 October. According to UN investigators, the systematic persecution of the Rohingya is an ongoing phenomenon. The Chair of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission in Myanmar, Marzuki Darusman stated in no uncertain terms that “atrocities continue to be committed in Myanmar, and the remaining Rohingya community continues to suffer…it is an ongoing genocide.”
A Year of Persecution
A bit of context is necessary. The Rohingya have suffered several bouts of persecution at the hands of the Burmese, totaling five targeted government’s efforts to get rid of the indigenous people since 1978. There were an estimated one million Rohingya living in Myanmar before the current crisis began. Now more than half of those people have fled, the overwhelming majority having reached Bangladesh since the exodus began.
In August of 2017, around 600,000 Rohingya refugees began fleeing hostilities at the hands of the Myanmar government. Neighboring countries were soon at a loss as to how to handle the growing number of displaced people.
First off, the presence of vast amounts of refugees created immense logistical challenges. Exhausted and sickly Rohingya, having traveled miles on foot through swamps and muddy rice fields, often carrying their children and elderly along the way, needed to be tended to. It was at that point that the UN and affiliated organizations first got involved. Groups such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN’s International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) rushed in to vaccinate tens of thousands of patients to prevent breakouts of disease in the crowded camps.
Supplying these makeshift residential areas became its own challenge. In mid October, the UN’s refugee wing, UNHCR airlifted to Bangladesh some 700 metric tons of life-saving aid, including tents, plastic sheets, blankets, mosquito nets, kitchen sets and jerry cans, and additional deliveries have been planned. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent by the UN over the past twelve months.
While the relief effort picked up speed, the focus started to shift from aid to justice. Officials began to think of how to address the Burmese government’s role in all of this.
Myanmar is not exactly known as a exemplar of human rights. While the Burmese have been targeting the Rohingya for almost 40 years, in what international organizations have termed ethnic cleansing efforts, this time around seems to be on a different scale. In addition to the huge volume of people displaced, the reported brutality of government forces is almost unfathomable. Stories from refugees about gang rapes, burnings, and wholesale indiscriminate slaughter, in some cases hundreds at a time, have been reported by international media.
Furthermore, Burma has not been cooperating with humanitarian workers, or allowing them access to affected areas within their country. Already a year ago, UNICEF official Simon Ingram told media sources of the need for the UN to step in and actively protect Rohingya within Burma: “This is an absolute fundamental requirement. The atrocities against children and civilians must end. We just must keep putting it on the record, we cannot keep silent.”
It is this trend that has led the UN to state in their most recent assessment of the crisis that accountability for atrocities in Myanmar “cannot be expected” within its borders. In its report, the Fact-Finding Mission called on the UN Security Council to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and suggested targeted sanctions against individual officials in the Myanmar government. It may only be a matter of time before more harsh measures are taken up by the international community to deal with the Rohingya crisis.
For Times Like These
A final point worth raising: we have seen on the world diplomatic stage recently quite a bit of criticism of the UN’s international justice system and its judicial arm in the form of the ICC. Much of this criticism has been well-deserved. The Court is often used as a tool to drive a political agenda, while overtly usurping —or at least attempting to usurp— national sovereignty.
In all fairness though, just because the ICC can practice overreach, this doesn’t mean the court has no reason to exist. The legitimate job of the ICC is to address crimes like the ones in Myanmar, a crisis of regional proportions, affecting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people that —and here’s the essential part— local authorities are incapable or unwilling to address. Indeed the ICC itself describes its mandate as that of leading the “global fight to end impunity.” In other words, where there are big-time criminals that are getting away with it, that’s when we step in. The moral case for this approach is pretty clear, namely, that it behooves the free world to prevent war criminals from running amok. But beyond the ethical rationale, there’s a very practical reason for international bodies to get involved in extreme cases. The consequences of widespread human rights violations are almost never confined to the location in which they occur. The effects of war including disruption of commerce, spread of disease, and displacement of refugees, spill over national borders. Case in point, the Myanmar crisis. As noted, the situation in Myanmar itself has long affected its neighbors. Turning a blind eye, or more bluntly, taking the “not my problem” approach, simply isn’t tenable for the long term.
