Nine Years On: Demographic Engineering, Host Country Realities, and the Urgent Need for Universal Accountability

Nine years later, remembrance cannot be separated from action. Rohingya communities continue to face violence, restrictions, displacement, statelessness, dispossession, and the loss of their homes and lands in Myanmar. Across the region, Rohingya refugees face shrinking humanitarian assistance, insecure legal status, and diminishing prospects for a safe and dignified future.

The lesson of 2017 must not be forgotten: no authority, whether a state military, de facto administration, armed organization, or political movement, should be permitted to persecute, dispossess, forcibly displace, or otherwise abuse the Rohingya with impunity.

The Rohingya crisis is not a historic tragedy that ended in 2017. In 2026, it remains an evolving crisis of persecution, demographic alteration, displacement, humanitarian deprivation, and orchestrated impunity.

I. Rakhine State: A New Threat to Rohingya Survival

While the Myanmar military continues its campaign of violence against civilians, the territorial expansion of the Arakan Army (AA), the armed wing of the United League of Arakan (ULA), has created an existential threat to the Rohingya in Rakhine State.

Across northern Rakhine, particularly Buthidaung and Maungdaw, Rohingya civilians have faced attacks, arson, shelling, forced displacement, conscription, enforced disappearance, and other abuses. The destruction and abandonment of Rohingya homes and communities risks turning displacement into permanent dispossession.

At the same time, emerging administrative and demographic engineering structures under AA authority raise serious concerns about the exclusion of Rohingya and their ability to return to their homes. Reports of Rakhine populations being settled in areas from which Rohingya have been displaced and restricted from return further heighten concerns about demographic alteration.

A change in who controls Rakhine State cannot mean a change in who is allowed to belong there. Any political settlement must guarantee the Rohingya's right to return voluntarily, safely and with dignity, with restoration of their homes and lands, equal rights, and a credible pathway to citizenship.

II. Host Countries: From Protection to Immigration Control

As conditions in Myanmar deteriorate, Rohingya refugees across South and Southeast Asia increasingly face shrinking humanitarian assistance, criminalization, detention, deportation, and restrictive immigration policies.

We are concerned by the growing tendency of States to respond to Rohingya displacement primarily through immigration control, detention, deportation, and unilateral registration mechanisms, while treating the absence of domestic refugee legislation or membership of the 1951 Refugee Convention as a basis for limiting their responsibilities.

A State's decision not to become party to the Refugee Convention cannot be understood as a licence to disregard the fundamental rights of people fleeing persecution. States remain bound by applicable international human rights obligations, including the principle of non-refoulement where return would expose individuals to a real risk of serious human rights violations.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh continues to host more than one million Rohingya refugees, yet severe funding shortfalls have resulted in cuts to food assistance and essential services. Rohingya refugees also face growing insecurity, including killings, abductions, extortion, forced recruitment, and violence by armed groups.

Restrictions on education, employment, movement, and other basic rights leave refugee children on humanitarian assistance without a meaningful path toward a secure and dignified life.

Malaysia

In January 2026, Malaysia introduced the Dokumen Pendaftaran Pelarian (DPP), a government-run refugee registration system intended to replace UNHCR's registration system. The initiative has raised serious concerns about privacy, refugee protection, and increased state surveillance and control, particularly amid intensified immigration enforcement, frequent raids, and indefinite detention.

India

India is likewise not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol. Rohingya refugees have faced detention, restrictions on basic rights, and threats of deportation to Myanmar despite the continuing risk of serious human rights violations.

The Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 further expands the State's powers over the entry, stay, movement, and removal of foreigners. Concerns also arise where decisions about who is considered a “foreigner” or “illegal migrant” are determined through executive-controlled mechanisms rather than ordinary courts, raising serious questions about independent scrutiny and due process.

Across the region, Rohingya refugees must not be treated first as immigration violators and only second, if at all, as people fleeing persecution.

III. International Justice: Binding Orders, Continuing Impunity

Nine years after the 2017 atrocities, international justice has yet to deliver accountability commensurate with the scale and continuing nature of crimes against the Rohingya.

In The Gambia v. Myanmar, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Myanmar in 2020 to take measures to prevent acts that fall within the Genocide Convention and to preserve evidence. These provisional measures are legally binding. Yet they have not been effectively implemented, while Rohingya continue to face persecution, displacement, and grave abuse.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has jurisdiction over certain crimes connected to the Bangladesh/Myanmar situation, but significant jurisdictional gaps remain because Myanmar is not a State Party to the Rome Statute. A UN Security Council referral could provide a broader basis for accountability.

The failure to impose meaningful consequences on senior Myanmar military leaders and other perpetrators has reinforced a culture of impunity. Accountability must also apply to non-state armed actors exercising power over civilian populations, including the Arakan Army.

Myanmar's democratic opposition must likewise confront the failures of the past. The National Unity Government (NUG) and other democratic forces should unequivocally condemn abuses against Rohingya civilians by all armed actors and support citizenship, equality, accountability, and the restoration of Rohingya rights.

IV. From Remembrance to Action

We call on States, UN bodies, regional organisations, and other international actors to:

1. Protect Rohingya civilians in Rakhine State
   Condition all engagement with the ULA/AA on compliance with international human rights and humanitarian law, including an end to attacks, forced displacement and disappearance, unlawful land confiscation and demographic engineering, extortion, and measures preventing Rohingya from returning to their homes of origin.
2. Fully fund the Rohingya humanitarian response
   Ensure adequate, predictable, and sustained humanitarian funding so that reductions in assistance do not further erode the rights, dignity, and protection of Rohingya refugees.
3. Protect Rohingya rights now, while conditions for safe and dignified repatriation are pursued
   The pursuit of conditions for the safe, voluntary, dignified, and sustainable return of the Rohingya must not come at the expense of protecting their rights in the present. The Rohingya cannot be asked to wait indefinitely for a future repatriation that remains uncertain while their rights and protection are progressively eroded in host countries. States must recognise and protect Rohingya as refugees and ensure that they can exercise the rights and protections that refugee status entails, including access to essential services, freedom from discrimination, protection from arbitrary detention and forced return, and meaningful participation in decisions affecting their lives. The international community must protect Rohingya rights where they are now, while continuing to work towards conditions that would allow for safe, voluntary, dignified, and sustainable repatriation.
4. Uphold the principle of non-refoulement
   End forced returns and maritime pushbacks, establish effective regional search-and-rescue mechanisms for Rohingya vessels in distress, and ensure that immigration-control measures do not circumvent States’ obligations under international human rights and refugee law.
5. Pursue accountability for crimes committed against the Rohingya
   Strengthen and expand accountability efforts for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and other serious violations committed against the Rohingya in Rakhine State, including through universal-jurisdiction investigations and prosecutions, targeted sanctions, and support for ongoing international accountability proceedings. Accountability must extend to all individuals responsible, regardless of their political or military affiliation.
6. Preserve documentation and evidence of Rohingya persecution
   Protect, preserve, and securely archive documentation and evidence of human rights violations and international crimes committed against the Rohingya, including testimonies, photographs, videos, satellite imagery, official records, and other forms of digital and physical evidence. States, UN bodies, and international organisations should support Rohingya-led documentation initiatives and ensure that such evidence is not destroyed, concealed, or rendered inaccessible, and that those documenting abuses are protected from retaliation. The preservation of the historical record is essential to ensuring that accountability remains possible and that the experiences of Rohingya survivors and communities are not erased.
7. Restore Rohingya rights and political agency
   Any political settlement must address citizenship, land restitution, freedom of movement, and equal rights, and must guarantee meaningful and effective Rohingya participation in peace processes, political negotiations, repatriation planning, reconstruction, and decisions concerning their future.
8. Ensure that remembrance leads to meaningful action
   The international community must recognise that remembrance of the Rohingya genocide cannot be separated from the pursuit of justice, truth, and durable rights. Commemoration must be accompanied by concrete measures to prevent further atrocities, protect Rohingya civilians and refugees, preserve the historical record, support survivors and affected communities, and ensure that those responsible for international crimes are held accountable.

V.  Preventing Future Atrocities

The international community must recognise continuing abuses against the Rohingya as potential indicators of future atrocity crimes. Systematic exclusion, denial of citizenship, restrictions on movement, demographic alteration, unlawful land confiscation, forced displacement, hate speech, arbitrary detention, and the destruction of evidence are well-recognised warning signs that require urgent preventive action. Prevention must become a central pillar of international engagement with Myanmar and the Rohingya crisis. Failure to act on early warning signs risks repeating the mistakes that preceded the atrocities of 2017.

Conclusion

Endorsing Organizations:

1. Rohingya Justice Initiative (RJI)
2. Iranian Center for International Criminal Law(ICICL)
3. Kurdistan Without Genocide (KWG)
4. Kurdish Organizations Network Coalition for the International Criminal Court (KONCICC)
5. Fondation Congolaise pour la Promotion des Droits Humains et la Paix
6. Association Cultures du Monde
7. World Without Genocide.
8. Abdulnabi Alekry
9. Human Rights Centre ZMINA (Ukraine)
10. Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM)

11. Terje Einarsen, Professor of International Law & Chairperson, ICJ Norway

Media Contact:

Sayedul Karim| Rohingya Justice Initiative (RJI)

Email: sayedul@therji.org | Web: https://therji.org/