ICAIOS with Aceh Peace Forum (APF), University Network for Peace (UNP), and Aceh Fulbright Association (AFA) organize:

A. Background

The Rohingyas have been living in Rakhine State of Myanmar for many centuries. United Nations estimated that the populations were around 729,000 people back in 2009. The Rohingyas, who are predominantly Muslim, are descendants of different migrants, including Arab merchants, Moorish, and Mughal. Successive military junta has subjected the Rohingyas into particularly harsh treatment, possibly more than any other ethno-religious minority in Myanmar. In 1977, the army committed an ethnic cleansing campaign in the name of Dragon King Operation that drove more than 200,00 Rohingyas into Bangladesh. 

The situation in Rakhine State today must be seen in a broader context of Myanmar’s failures at nation-building –it’s one of the poorest and most isolated parts of the region despite having significant economic potentials. As for the Rohingyas, they have been facing significant restrictions for accessing citizenship, which has a serious impact on other rights and the ability to obtain government services. Following the outbreak of deadly inter-communal clashes in Rakhine State in 2012, more than 137,000 people, mostly Rohingya Muslims, remained in displacement camps where access to basic services is wholly inadequate. 

Problems around refugees are very important to address with respect to the underlying causes of their plight and the complications they bring to the host countries.  Abandonment or inaction of host countries could extend the human suffering and delay the justice for the refugees.  Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand –who recently ought to deal with the plight of Rohingyas to their territories, are not parties to United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees or its 1967 Protocol. Having said this, the countries do not have national legislation and mechanism to address refugees’ problem in place, nor are they abide by the responsibility to provide them with assistance. Therefore, these hosting countries have excuses to respond to the problem in such a common ways: detention, forced repatriation, or encamped with limited freedom of movement as results of fear and rejection. 

ASEAN’s annual summit in Thailand in late February 2009 was the first ASEAN’s attempt to address Rohingyas refugees’ issue.  However, no solutions were found partly because it was just a side agenda.  Instead, ASEAN passed on the issue to the Bali Process for People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime. Given the fact that time that there was no mechanism yet established to classify Rohingyas as asylum seekers, economic refugees, or migrant worker. 

The latest big wave of boat people from Rohingya to Aceh shows that respecting citizenship, equal rights, and equal government protection to the Rohingya, is not an interest of the Myanmar Government only. Overall, this situation leads to a conclusion that international communities, especially leaders of ASEAN countries should step in and work together to find long-term and lasting solution to the problems.

In May 2015, the Government of Indonesia, Malaysia and Malaysia have agreed to accept the Rohingya refugees to access these countries for the sake of humanitarian reasons, temporarily.  However, there is still no certainty and guarantee that the Rohingyas refugees could safely return to their homes in Arakan, Myanmar, due to absence of international law enforcement to stop the human rights abuse there. For that reasons, Aceh Fulbright Association (AFA), Aceh Peace Forum (APF), Aceh University Network for Peace (AUNP), and the International Centre for Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies (ICAIOS), see an urgency to organize an early international conference to address the above mentioned humanitarian problems, focusing on an effort to prepare and implement an advocacy strategy to help the Rohingyas.  

In preparing for such an urgent international conference, a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) involving multi-stakeholders of the issues is considered necessary as part of the efforts to consolidate actors, materials, and knowledge of the issues.

B. Objectives

The FGD has two objectives:

1. To elaborate local, national, regional (ASEAN) and international policies dealing with the problem and mobilizing global support to the problem that could become a pressuring force for related decision makers

2. To prepare and disseminate a consolidated advocacy materials and raise international community awareness on needed strategic and essential efforts to solve the problem. This work will  focus on securing Rohingyas’ rights to return to their country and get equal protection from Myanmar Government 

 

C. Expected Output

1. A common understanding on Rohingya problem and agreed to mobilize a global support to find the solution in solving the Rohingya problem.

2. Agreed to organize the International conference as regional and International collaboration dealing to Rohingya problem and an effort to create the stability of security and peace in the region.

 

D. Participant, Venue and Time

The participants in Focus Group Discussion are academicians, human right defenders, humanitarian workers, community organizers, and other scholars who have interests to support the Rohingya advocacy and peace in region.

Venue: ICAIOS Seminar Room;  

Time : June 15, 2015 at 16:15 to 18:30

E. Methodology

All of participants will be resource persons and actively to share the ideas, but to start the discussion, we will ask five to seven persons to share their knowledge (3-5 minutes each) on current situation on Rakhine and the problem on refugees in region, the implication of peace in ASEAN, and analysis the human rights violations or crimes against humanity. The FGD expected to have a common understanding and concrete actions.

Expected colleagues to share their knowledge:

1. Juanda Djamal (Aceh Peace Forum & New Aceh Consortium)

2. Mala Rahman (Unimal & AFA)

3. Faisar Jihadi (AFA)

4. M Iqbal P (FH Unsyiah)