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Surviving statelessness and trafficking: A Rohingya case study of intersection and protection gaps

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SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The Rohingya community has survived genocide in Myanmar. They also continue to face an onward struggle to survive the debilitating socio-economic conditions of refugee and IDP camps, further persecution and discrimination, and the risks associated with travelling in search of physical and socio-economic security. They are vulnerable to trafficking for different forms of exploitation and to human rights violations resulting from a lack of state protections. This paper considers the additional layers of vulnerability that arise from the discriminatory and arbitrary denial of citizenship in their home country, Myanmar, and denial of legal status in the countries to which they fled. Based on qualitative research in Myanmar, Bangladesh, India and Malaysia, the paper joins up the issues across different country contexts, revealing that each family’s search for peace and security often spans multiple countries and multiple generations.

This paper finds that statelessness should not simply be viewed as a cause or consequence of trafficking. Rather it is an intersectional factor that compounds the risks of exploitation and other human rights abuses at the hands of both brokers and state authorities. This includes abduction, extortion, forced labour and other forms of labour exploitation, sexual exploitation, torture, death, arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention and refoulement. Further, the intergenerational nature of Rohingya displacement and statelessness creates barriers to securing durable solutions. The risks of further exploitation or trafficking are therefore sustained across lifetimes and across different generations. The research indicates that statelessness increases the likelihood of trafficking outcomes; compounds the negative impact of experiences of exploitation; and leaves victims exposed to continued risks and vulnerabilities to further trafficking.

This paper is divided into two parts. Part 1 outlines six issues that lie at the intersections of statelessness and trafficking experiences: persecution; socioeconomic insecurities; lack of access to regular and safe migration; lack of legal protections and detention; lack of access to safe and decent work; and intergenerational statelessness. Part 2 explores the experiences of Rohingyas in different country contexts: Myanmar; Bangladesh; India; and Malaysia. The paper’s recommendations highlight the importance of ensuring that the specific vulnerabilities of stateless people are factored into anti-trafficking initiatives and international protection frameworks.

Methodology

This research is collaborative and centres the knowledge and analysis of local and Rohingya researchers and community workers. Data was collected and analysed from qualitative research amongst Rohingya populations in four countries. This includes: 30 in-depth interviews with Rohingyas in Bangladesh, Myanmar, India and Malaysia; detailed observations and reports over six months from four Rohingya researchers living in four different areas of Rakhine State Myanmar; and the analysis of Rohingya key workers in Malaysia, Bangladesh, India and in diaspora. It further draws on discussions from two multi-country focus groups with Rohingya community workers organised by ISI in support of the 2023 report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons especially women and children.

Our research includes a focus on the gendered experiences of both statelessness and trafficking.
The majority of interviews were with women, conducted in women-only spaces by other women in Rohingya, Burmese or Hindi languages. Interviews were carefully designed to be sensitive to experiences of trauma and as such to not ask women to recount personal experiences of trauma. Since the research was conducted in conflict-affected areas and refugee settings, we developed a strong ethical framework to minimalize risk. We ensure the security of data, and the anonymity of research participants and, where necessary, researchers.

Background

The Rohingya are an ethnic community belonging to Rakhine State in Myanmar, whose histories in Rakhine, now in the territory of Myanmar, long pre-date modern nation-states and borders. The Rohingya’s arbitrary and discriminatory deprivation of nationality by Myanmar, which was initiated under military rule, is a key element in the decadeslong persecution and genocide perpetrated against the community. The persecution of Rohingya in Myanmar and their lack of protection as refugees outside Myanmar are strongly linked to Myanmar’s systematic imposition of statelessness on Rohingyas. Myanmar’s 1982 ethno-centric and exclusionary Citizenship Law, together with the arbitrary implementation of citizenship rules, provided a domestic framework that sanctioned discrimination, persecution and expulsion. The clear exclusion of Rohingya from access to citizenship by right - as opposed to a highly discretionary and arbitrary naturalisation procedure - was a deliberate next step towards the ratcheting up of abuses against the group. As such, Rohingya have fled structural discrimination and persecution in Myanmar over decades resulting in a large and scattered refugee population world-wide. It is estimated that three quarters of the Rohingya population currently live outside Myanmar.

There are now approximately one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and hundreds of thousands of Rohingya in other countries, such as Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East; India, Pakistan and elsewhere in South Asia; Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. A smaller number of Rohingyas have settled in Australia, Europe and North America. Within the contexts of the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Rohingyas have experienced inter-generational statelessness and continue to live in situations of protracted displacement without access to legal status or the legal right to work. This has prevented children and youth from accessing formal education and training and has driven men and women into precarious work in the informal sectors of the economy with few safety standards, often exposed to exploitation and with no access to social safety nets. In times of external shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic, humanitarian disaster and conflict, Rohingya families are at heightened risk of hunger, illness and violence.1 Family members in Myanmar and elsewhere who rely on remittances from those working overseas are also increasingly vulnerable to these impacts.

Exposure to violence, structural discrimination, movement restrictions and socio-economic hardship in both Myanmar and Bangladesh drive onwards migration. There are currently two main routes from Bangladesh and Myanmar to other countries of Southeast Asia and beyond: by boat across the Andaman Sea to Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere; and by land through Myanmar, across the border into Thailand and onwards to Malaysia and elsewhere.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 3,500 Rohingyas attempted sea crossings in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal in 2022. This figure represents a 360 per cent increase and signals increasing desperation compared to 2021 when around 700 individuals were recorded to have made similar journeys. Regarding the death toll, around 348 individuals are believed to have died or gone missing at sea making 2022 one of the deadliest years for the sea journey since 2014.

Nearly 45 per cent of those rescued were women and children. Routes across land are also risky. In many situations, travellers never reach their destination.
They may be arrested, abandoned, or die en route.
Others are abused or exploited.

Experiences of abuse and exploitation en route include:

  • Extortion from brokers such as:
  • Transportation fees rising four or five-fold after departure or demands of extra money for passengers to disembark boats or complete the journey.
  • Threats, violence and sometimes abduction of family members in different countries to recover debts/extra costs.
  • Violence, torture or rape by brokers and security forces.

  • Being ‘sold on’ to other syndicates on route for the purpose of extortion.

  • Forced labour on route, including portering for brokers.

  • Food and water shortages, ill-equipped, overcrowded vehicles and unseaworthy boats.

  • Injury and death resulting from abuse and inhumane conditions.

Experiences of exploitation at the destination include:

  • Forced/abusive marriage including early marriage.

  • Commercial sexual exploitation.

  • Domestic servitude.

  • Debt-bondage.

  • Child labour.

  • Unsafe and unregulated work.

  • Unpaid wages/wage theft.

Rights violations and abuses by state security forces en route and at destination include:

  • Failure to provide humanitarian assistance to passengers on boats in distress.

  • ‘Push-backs’ of boats into high seas and international/neighbouring country waters.

  • Denying passenger disembarkation.

  • Lack of access to asylum procedures or identification of trafficking victims and stateless people.

  • Detention on arrival, denial of access to

UNHCR in detention, detention for indefinite periods, inhumane detention conditions for example in Malaysia and India.

  • Refoulement to Myanmar following ‘rescue’ at sea, even where they are refugees registered in Bangladesh.

  • Arrest and detention en route through Myanmar often without access to legal assistance and with insufficient finances to secure release.

  • Torture and abuse in custody.

  • Lack of social support and re-integration services for separated children (often where adults are imprisoned), survivors of sexual violence, and other trafficking survivors.

  • Failure to provide household registration to returnees, leading to ongoing abuse and vulnerabilities.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on this paper’s findings, we recommend that anti-trafficking prevention and protection initiatives are more inclusive of stateless people and targeted to their specific needs and vulnerabilities. For example, initiatives to prevent trafficking should focus on ensuring access to basic rights and socio-economic rights for stateless people. Additionally, preventing trafficking in refugee and IDP situations, and protecting survivors of trafficking from refugee and IDP backgrounds, requires measures that are situated within a broader framework that factors in the need for protection not just from criminal syndicates, but also from perpetrating states and state actors. Accordingly, we recommend that relevant actors committed to preventing trafficking of stateless Rohingya and protecting Rohingya victims of trafficking:

  • Promote the right to work for stateless people and refugees; provide access to livelihoods and decent work.

  • Increase access for stateless refugees to durable solutions such as resettlement, integration, and safe and voluntary repatriation, including by providing specific pathways and routes to overcome the barriers encountered by stateless people.

  • For Rohingyas, promote their right to citizenship in Myanmar as an integral component of securing safe repatriations.

  • Provide access to safe and regular migration routes for stateless people (including through bypassing the role of the state of origin in proving identity)

  • Increase access to family reunion and reunification through safe and regular routes for stateless people, including by reducing the evidentiary requirements to establish family ties.

  • Promote access to civil registration, including birth registration, in countries of refuge with a view to providing pathways to regularise legal status and citizenship for those experiencing intergenerational statelessness.

  • For stateless children, provide access to formal education, accreditation, and development opportunities to enable them to access decent work in future and lift themselves out of the cycles of poverty and exploitation.

  • Incorporate refugee and statelessness protection into search and rescue operations including providing access to UNHCR, ensuring the right to apply for asylum and non-refoulement.

  • Improve the identification of refugees, victims of trafficking and stateless people and provide them with appropriate protection services.

  • Provide UNHCR with access to detention centres.