‘Neither Repatriation, nor Resettlement, nor Local Integration’: Is the ‘Responsibility-Sharing’ Only Alternative Tool for the Solution of the Rohingya Refugee Crisis in Bangladesh?

The ‘right to solutions’ to refugeehood by local integration, resettlement, or repatriation enshrined in the 1951 Refugee Convention is inextricably linked to rebuilding refugees’ lives and lessening the burden of the primary host country. This paper examines these solutions attempted for one million Myanmar Rohingya living in Bangladesh. It argues that none of them resolves the Rohingya refugee crisis. Owing to the sheer numbers and political pressure to return, local integration is not a viable option. Resettlement to other countries appears unlikely because the response is very poor. Although repatriation is a workable option, the prognosis is that any repatriation process is going to be thickly controlled owing to the insular national politics in an ethnically divided Myanmar and its narrow citizenship verification norms that reject the Rohingya as their national, and the recent military coup in 2021 which makes ensuring the ‘safe environment’ in Myanmar highly improbable as the Military is arguably responsible for their persecution. This paper then explores the root cause of such failures and unsuitability to apply to the Rohingya situation- which emerged from the absence of legal entitlement to durable solutions in international refugee law and the discretion of states. It finally offers two alternative solutions to the Rohingya refugeehood: by exploring how durable solutions should be sought and applied in a principled way; and by investigating the feasibility of ‘responsibility-sharing’ as an alternative tool. The significance of this paper lies in exploring the intricacies associated with the solution to the refugee crisis from a Global South context which have an implication for other refugees including the European refugees.