THE ROHINGYA CRISIS AND THE WAY FORWARD

The Rohingya challenges, characterized by the large dislocation and marginalization of the Rohingya Islamic people from Myanmar (former Burma), stood as an important social problem of the 21st Century. The origin of the conflict can be traced to years of tribal upheavals and the British imperial administration which engendered divisive tendencies amongst the people. These divisive tendencies skyrocketed even after independence and climaxed in the 1982 nationality or citizenship law, which made the Rohingya people stateless. The increase of tribal nationalism has played an important role in these divisions, with the main Myanmar tribal group seeing the Rohingya as aliens. The effect of the Rohingya conflict is unfathomable, affecting over a million people living in poor situations in Bangladesh, over stretching the country’s resources and causing insecurity. The Myanmar administration’s divisive policies, combative military behaviours, and socio-economic marginalization of the Rohingya have amounted to serious human rights abuses. This makes one to ask what are the causes of Rohingya people’s crisis? What are the effects? How can the challenges be resolved or is there any way forward? To find answers to the above cited questions is the objectives of this work. In order to get undiluted answers to the questions raised, this work employs secondary sources like books, journals, magazines, newspapers, and internet materials. Ethnic nationalism theory was used as the theoretical construct while documentary evidence was used as the analytical tool. The work also did some literature review in order to enrich the background knowledge of the work. At the end the work discovered that factors like ethnic and religious discrimination, political and military issues, socio-economic marginalization, militarization and human rights abuses, and geopolitical dynamics caused the crisis. The effects are humanitarian impact, socio-economic strain on Bangladesh, security concerns, and international response. In proffering the way forward, the work recommended that all the causes of the conflict as highlighted above must be stopped and as the way forward factors like accountability, humanitarian support, strengthening of international cooperation, and promotion of other sustainable solutions must be vigorously pursued.