Rohingya Refugees: Exploring Global South's Role in Shaping Refugee Flows and Human Rights

The Rohingya crisis in Myanmar is rooted in a combination of colonial legacies, decades of marginalisation and oppression under authoritarian rule, and complex social and religious factors. Currently, Bangladesh hosts over one million forcibly displaced Rohingya, and the repercussions persist. Based on these historical factors shaping and aggravating the crisis, this paper examines how nation-states in the Global South, as a specific type of political organisation, create and respond to refugee flows and their human rights. It argues that the multiethnic realities in Myanmar, which conflict with the nation-state norm, along with ideological disagreements and state failures, serve as the political foundations to produce refugees. Two key examples support this argument: i) the development of Burmese nationalism, and ii) the removal of citizenship and the exacerbation of ethnic divisions within a multiethnic Myanmar society. The paper concludes with a reflection on the dubious response to the refugee flows by Bangladesh which conflicts with the political basis for the international refugee regime. The significance of this paper lies in exploring the limitation set by the nation-states in the Global South to maximise their political expediencies that dilute and compromise the legal protection regime for refugees and their human rights.