The Rohingya Crisis: Diplomacy, Responsibility, and the Path to Repatriation

Abstract

Since 2017, over 1.2 million Rohingya have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine State to escape military-led massacres and systemic village burnings. Currently, 961,114 refugees reside in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, forming the world’s largest refugee settlement. This protracted crisis has generated severe ecological and economic strains across South Asia, which are increasingly exacerbated by dwindling international aid and wavering global attention. Amidst this stagnation, regional diplomatic forums, such as the 6th BIMSTEC Summit, present critical windows for intervention. This study systematically analyses the Rohingya crisis through the theoretical lenses of Political Realism and Transitional Justice. First, it documents the legal and empirical evidence of the Myanmar military’s campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Second, it reframes Rohingya repatriation not as an empirical inevitability, but as an urgent political and humanitarian imperative, particularly in the volatile context of Myanmar's post-2021 military coup. Third, the paper outlines pragmatic diplomatic and economic strategies to establish bilateral leverage between Dhaka and Naypyidaw. Fourth, it delineates the shared responsibilities of Myanmar, Bangladesh, and the international community, arguing for a strategic shift away from paralyzed frameworks like SAARC toward functional regional bodies such as BIMSTEC and ASEAN. Finally, by extracting targeted mechanisms from successful historical repatriations in Mozambique, Guatemala, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Liberia, this study proposes forward-looking, actionable policies designed to foster long-term regional stability.