In Rakhine State, the Arakan Army is now targeting Rohingya in ways that are reminiscent of the genocidal Burmese military’s decades-long assault on ethnic and religious minorities. For over two years, while gaining increasing territorial control of Arakan, the AA unfortunately resorted to targeting the Rohingya remaining in their ancestral villages and townships – including Buthidaung and Maungdaw – with atrocities. These atrocities include arson attacks, looting, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, forced labor and recruitment, forced transfer and confinement, and killing and massacres of hundreds of Rohingya. Like the military, the AA has also committed rape, gang rape, and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence against Rohingya women and girls; and disseminated anti-Rohingya hate speech, genocidal rhetoric, and propaganda through its virtual and physical channels.

Now, victims and survivors of the 2017 genocide are starving to death in their homeland. Reports of hunger and famine continue to surface in Rakhine State, where its diverse communities are being denied access to humanitarian aid. Access to food and clean water are virtually nonexistent for the majority-Muslim Rohingya, who are found in northern Rakhine or confined in highly militarized internally displaced persons’ camps in Sittwe. Partly due to years-long, exacerbating internet and communications cuts across Rakhine State, its dire situation has regrettably received limited international and local media coverage.

For nearly two years, such worsening human rights and humanitarian conditions in Rakhine State have forced more than 150,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh – or take deadly sea crossings across South and Southeast Asia. In just over a year, more than 11,000 Rohingya have reportedly taken their escape to sea, where they become exposed to brutal forms of torture, forced labor, killing, and sexual violence from their traffickers.

Meanwhile, Rohingya’s prospect of securing refuge has deteriorated even further. In Bangladesh, massive and unprecedented levels of funding cuts have plunged the over one million Rohingya refugees deeper into a preexisting livelihood and security crisis. In Indonesia, India, Thailand, and Malaysia, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees remain unregistered without access to protection from exploitation, forced servitude, immigration detention, forcible deportation, and targeted violence. The global rise in xenophobic and anti-refugee sentiment has also further challenged pathways for third-country resettlement.

Therefore, on the eighth anniversary of the 2017 genocide, we ask the international and regional community to take immediate actions for the survival of the Rohingya.

For the Rohingya remaining in Rakhine State, we call for cross-border aid to be enabled across the Bangladesh-Myanmar border with the support of United Nations organizations, international non-governmental organizations, and trusted local civil society; an independent human rights monitoring mechanism to be deployed to Rakhine State to monitor and investigate ongoing atrocities, as well as ensure the preservation of evidence in line with the provisional measures that were issued by the International Court of Justice in January 2020; and all perpetrators of atrocities against the Rohingya to be held accountable under international law. At the UN High-Level Conference on Rohingya and Other Minorities this September, Member States must center themselves on justice and accountability efforts to effectively address the Rohingya and the wider Myanmar crisis.

For the Rohingya refugees displaced elsewhere in South and Southeast Asia, we call for the immediate resumption of humanitarian aid; provision of formal education and employment opportunities; disembarkation and protection of all Rohingya seeking refuge, including by taking measures against human trafficking networks according to the Bali Process; and cessation of detention, forcible deportation, anti-Rohingya and xenophobic hate speech and other abuses. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations should take active measures to protect Rohingya over engaging with the Burmese military and its attempts to hold sham elections. Conditions conducive for the Rohingya’s safe, voluntary, sustainable, and dignified return to Myanmar must be achieved before any kind of repatriation effort takes place.

Ultimately, all stakeholders must meaningfully engage with the Rohingya – including women and youth – in advancing any mechanism or process that may affect their lives and future.

Eight years after the 2017 genocide, the Rohingya are facing another existential threat. Now is the time for the international and regional community – including the Burmese pro-democracy leadership – to actively apply our lessons of history so as not to repeat it.

Women’s Peace Network