The Rohingya people are the largest stateless population in the world.
A mainly Muslim minority in Myanmar (Burma), a majority Buddhist country, there were nearly one million stateless Rohingya living within the country’s borders in early 2017 and an additional 200,000 refugees in neighbouring Bangladesh.
Why are they stateless?
The government of Myanmar does not recognise the Rohingya as citizens, and refuses even to use the name – instead referring to them as ‘Bengali’. The 1982 Burmese Nationality Act specifies that only ethnic groups who can prove they were resident in the territory before 1823 may obtain Burmese citizenship. The Rohingya are not one of the 135 listed minorities.
How does it affect them?
The Burmese military’s campaign of ethnic cleansing that began on August 25, 2017, after the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army armed group attacked police outposts and a military base in northern Rakhine State. More than 600,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh. In September 2017, the UN secretary-general António Guterres said the conflict had become “the world’s fastest developing refugee emergency and a humanitarian and human rights nightmare”.
Further reading: UN Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, 2017. Last report by OIM.
Photo credit: Mathias Eick, EU/ECHO, Rakhine State, Myanmar/Burma, September 2013 (on Flickr CC-BY-ND)