Understanding the Piece “Development, Peacebuilding, And the Rohingya In Myanmar” By Mohammad Shahabuddi

Many thousands of Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh and neighbouring countries after Myanmar’s army launched a brutal crackdown on them in August 2017. The United Nations later called it a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.[1] ” In January 2020, the United Nations’ top court ordered the Buddhist-majority government to take steps to protect the Rohingya people from genocide.[2] The Rohingya, one of the world’s most vulnerable ethnic groups, are one of Myanmar’s many ethnic minorities. At the start of 2017[3], Myanmar’s population was estimated to be around one million.[4] However, the Government of Myanmar, which is a predominantly Buddhist country, denied the Rohingya Citizenship and excluded them from the census of 2014, hence refusing them to recognise as a citizen of their country[5]. As a result, the government began to regard them as Bangladesh’s illegal immigrants.

Myanmar’s Development and Peace Policy

After decades of military rule and self-imposed isolation from global politics and economics, there was an apparent transition to democracy at the beginning of 2011[6]. After that, Myanmar’s then-de-facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, attracted foreign investment in 2015. They envisioned investment-led economic growth as a key to the country’s economic prosperity and ethnic harmony. However, this period of market liberalisation was shortly followed by new waves of ethnic violence against the Rohingya minority, which began in 2012 and resulted in genocidal violence in 2017.

The Policy of Development or Policy of Breaking Peace

Counter-productive Economic Opening and transition to democracy in Myanmar have given businesses significant opportunities to expand in a high-growth but problematic emerging market[7]. While the opening sparked hopes that commerce and prosperity would assist Myanmar’s poorest, most new investments require local partners with high-level roles in Myanmar’s political-military nexus, so the profits have mostly benefited existing local elites. Furthermore, the military carried out ethnic cleansing of 2 million Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state, the exact opposite of what economic liberalisation was supposed to avoid.

We must look at how business may assist in peacebuilding to understand why economic opening and rapid development failed to bring inclusive peace to Myanmar. Development is a contested and contentious topic in Myanmar defined locally not as broad societal growth but the unjustified picking of winner and loser communities by foreign entities.[8]

There began a large-scale development project that largely targeted Rohingya agricultural land and communities, forcing them to flee their homes. Various large projects, such as the Kaladana multi-modal Transit project, which is being carried out jointly by India and Myanmar, aim to connect Kolkata, India’s eastern seaport, to Mizoram, Myanmar’s Rakhine and Chin states. China is also building a deep-sea port at Kyaukpu, Rakhine state, for which China International Trust Investment Corporation (CITIC) is providing 85 per cent of the money for a total cost of USD 7.3 billion. As a method for bringing peace to Rakhine state, more development and investment are desired. However, because of severe travel restrictions and their statelessness, the Rohingya have been unable to participate in most Rakhine state development projects.

The government held an international business expo in February 2019 to alleviate ethnic tensions in Rakhine state. According to satellite photographs and videos, Myanmar’s government began a large operation in October 2017 to destroy burned houses and, in some cases, entire communities to construct new residences, security troops, and infrastructure in Rakhine state. In addition, the region’s mining fields are expanding, and a new road has been developed to connect the region to the rest of the country.

To entice investors, certain adjustments were made to the rules controlling land ownership. Foreign enterprises were allowed to engage in all industries under the new Foreign Investment Law of 2012, which provided them with a great deal of clarity concerning land usage. Foreign enterprises were allowed to engage in all industries under the new Foreign Investment Law of 2012, which provided them with a great deal of clarity concerning land usage. This land grab further marginalises minorities, causing ethnic tensions to worsen and more bloodshed to occur.

All the actions show how the Rohingyas, a vulnerable minority, are bearing the brunt of the ‘economic development’ enforced as a peace approach. Myanmar has become more vulnerable to war because of its economic liberalisation. Myanmar’s leadership purposefully utilized economic progress as a ruse to keep the Rohingyas out of the country. As a result, the neoliberal developmentalism approach as a vehicle for peacebuilding is counter-productive[9].

Rohingya Minority and International Organizations

The principle of minority[10] rights emphasizes the point that all people including members of ethnic, racial and religious minorities have the same basic rights as other citizens of the society with no discrimination[11]. However, protecting minority rights has been a huge issue for decades. Minorities today do not appear to be supported, yet they are occasionally upset and neglected.

The UN’s half-hearted response to the Rohingya situation in Rakhine state was regrettable, but not unexpected (for example- the civil war in Sri Lanka). The UN has described Myanmar’s actions as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”[12]. The United Nations’ attitude toward Myanmar’s government mirrored that of the diplomatic world, which was dazzled by Aung San Suu Kyi’s image as an icon of freedom. Myanmar’s intent to commit international crimes was made clear to the most senior levels of the UN, but still no action was taken. Following the genocide, reports surfaced that the UN Resident Coordinator attempted to discourage human rights activists from travelling to Rakhine state, as well as warn that ethnic cleansing could be on the way.

The UN Security Council’s failure to act forcefully in response to today’s rapidly escalating humanitarian crisis harkens back to its attitude toward comparable crises around the world during the 1990s.[13] Despite the UN’s ever-expanding toolkit for dealing with large-scale human rights violations, ethnic cleansing campaigns, and crimes of genocide, the Rohingya crisis reminds us that human security is always prioritised before political interests. Idealism has no place in today’s world. Concerned UN personnel were urged to remain silent on the Rohingya situation. Several attempts were made to reconcile the UN’s development, peace, security, and human rights agendas. However, UNDP changed the UN’s focus away from human rights and toward development.

The UNHCR made little effort to halt the abuses faced by Rohingyas in the camps, although the two field staff who tried to raise concerns were removed from the operation[14]. The failure of this intervention threatened the lives of the officials working in the country. ASEAN has also been criticized for its handling of the Rohingya crisis and for not sharing the responsibility of solving it.

Reports on UN involvement in the Rohingya crisis show the positive trends in Myanmar’s economy. We can see that this progress did not eradicate the ethnic tensions in the country, but it has only increased it. Thus, it is clear that the neoliberal model of developmentalism will still dominate peacebuilding strategy.

Conclusion

According to my understanding of this topic, the issue of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority clearly demonstrates that development ideology not only marginalises minorities but also tends to legitimise them in the name of the country’s economic growth in international law, suppressing minorities’ interests. Aung San Suu Kyi introduced democracy and human rights to Myanmar for the Rohingyas, but these have been buried in the bureaucratic concerns of legal and political status. The above-mentioned developmental ideology in international law tries to conceal the asymmetric power relations that rise to ethnic tensions in democratic societies. Myanmar’s development and peace policies were counter-productive, resulting in conflicts and atrocities. Hence, there is no use for idealism. Pragmatism is the key to solving the humanitarian problem. When it comes to foreign assistance, there are indicators that the UN’s approach to such matters is evolving. Its genocidal measures should be enhanced with more forceful action; otherwise, they will stay impotent and fail. For years, the minority population has harboured resentment. Without overhauling “a culture of pervasive prejudice” and ensuring that Rohingya are treated as a citizenry, the situation in Rakhine State is unlikely to improve, says journalist and author Francis Wade[15].

Reference(s):

[1] Saleh Ahmed, William Paul Simmons, Rashed Chowdhary & Saleemul Huq, The Sustainability-peace nexus in crisis contexts: how the Rohingya escaped the ethnic violence in Myanmar, but are trapped into environment challenges in Bangladesh, Springer Link, (May 22, 2024, 6:40 PM), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-021-00955-6.

[2] Myanmar Rohingya: What do you need to know about the crisis, BBC News, (May 22, 2024, 01:45 PM), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41566561.

[3] Eleanor Albert and Lindsay Maizland, The Rohingya Crisis, Council on Foreign Relations, (May 23, 2024, 2021, 11:30 PM), https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/Rohingya-crisis

[4] Represented the largest percentage of Muslims in Myanmar with the majority living in Rakhine state.

[5] Eleanor, supra note 3.

[6] Mohammad Shahabuddin, Development, peacebuilding, and the Rohingya in Myanmar, Blog of European Journal of International Law, (May 23, 2024, 2021, 6: 30 PM), https://www.ejiltalk.org/development- peacebuildingand-the-rohingya-in-myanmar/

[7] Jason Miklian, Contextualizing and theorising economic development, local business and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, Taylor and Francis Online, (May 23, 2024, 7: 20 PM), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14678802.2019.1561624.

[8] Id.

[9] Mohammad, Supra note 6.

[10] Refers to a group of people in a country or city that is distinguished from the majority in terms of religion or race (Ariamanesh,2011).

[11] Fatemeh Mihandoost and Bahman Babajanian, The rights of Minorities in International Law, Journal of Politics and Law, (May 25, 2024, 11:25 PM), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305765665_The_Rights_of_Minorities_in_International_Law

[12] Stephanie Nebehay and Simon Lewis, U.N. brands Myanmar violence a ‘textbook’ example of ethnic cleansing ” Reuters,(last visited May 22, 2024, 8:25 PM)

[13] Drs. Thomas Kruiper, Rohingya Crisis and UN Involvement, School of Global and Public Affairs, (May 22, 2024, 7: 15 PM), https://www.ie.edu/school-global-public-affairs/about/news/Rohingya-crisis-un-involvement/.

[14] Malang Faye, A forced migration from Myanmar to Bangladesh and beyond: humanitarian response to Rohingya refugee crisis, Journal of International Humanitarian Action, (May 22, 2024, 11:50 PM), https://jhumanitarianaction.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41018-021-00098-4

[15] Eleanor, supra note 3.