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Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Vol. 12, Nº. 1 (May-October 2021)
234
THE ROHINGYA REFUGEES IN BANGLADESH:
A DIFFICULT PATH TO INTEGRATION, BETWEEN HUMANITARIAN AND
SECURITY CONCERNS
SHAHANAZ PARVEN
arfin.cu29@gmail.com
She is Ph.D. candidate of the Department of Political Processes and Analysis, in the Faculty of
Social and Humanitarian Sciences of People’s Friendship University of Russia, Moscow (Russia).
She is writing a dissertation on the subject of “Political Management of Migration from
Bangladesh in Modern Conditions”. Her scientific interests include the evaluation of demographic
and social public policies and their predicted impact on the population. Shahanaz Parven has
received a Bachelor and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of
Chittagong, and also holds a second Master’s degree in Political Science from the People’s
Friendship University of Russia, Moscow. She speaks Bangla, English, and Russian.
Abstract
In this paper, we analyse the tensions between the promotion of human rights for the
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and the security of the country against the risk of civil war.
Under the theoretical framework of ethnopolitical conflicts, and the methodology of the four-
factors model, we develop a risk assessment for a civil conflict in Bangladesh based upon
behaviouristic observables. The assessment suggests that some human rights would, if
promoted, increase the factors of risk for civil war in the host country. In particular, solving
the problem of statelessness of the refugees through their political integration in the host
country is linked to an increase in the risk of civil conflict. The promotion of other rights, such
as access to health and the right to repatriation, seems to decrease the level of risk of conflict.
This lets us formulate the desirable chracteristics of a policy for integration that does not
worsen the political instability of the country. The implications of this study in light of the
illegal acquisition of Bangladeshi passports by some Rohingya refugees are also discussed.
Keywords
Political instability, ethnic conflict, Rohingya refugee crisis, four-factors model, rights of the
refugees
How to cite this article
Parven, Shahanaz (2021). The Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh: a Difficult Path to
Integration, Between Humanitarian and Security Concerns . Janus.net, e-journal of
international relations. Vol12, Nº. 1, May-October 2021. Consulted [online] at date of last
visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.12.1.13
Article received on May 16, 2020 and accepted for publication on October 30, 2020
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e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Vol. 12, Nº. 1 (May-October 2021), pp. 234-250
The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh:
a difficult path to integration, between humanitarian and security concerns
Shahanaz Parven
235
THE ROHINGYA REFUGEES IN BANGLADESH:
A DIFFICULT PATH TO INTEGRATION, BETWEEN HUMANITARIAN
AND SECURITY CONCERNS
SHAHANAZ PARVEN
1. Introduction. The tension between protecting the human rights of the
Rohingya refugees and preventing civil conflict in Bangladesh
Bangladesh is a country that is affected by a significant risk of political violence
(Chawdhury, 2016). In recent years there have been frequent terrorists attack in Dhaka
(Mehra, 2016), along with violent protests known as hartals (Hossain, 2011);
parliamentary elections have systematically been accompanied by violence (Akond et al.,
2019), and climate change has had disastrous effects on the land and agriculture of the
country (Islam and van Amstel, 2018). These are all indicators that suggest an uncertain
future for the stability of Bangladesh’s political constitution (Hassan and Nazneen, 2017).
The endogenous factors which contribute to the risk of political instability in the country
are further aggravated by the presence of a massive refugee crisis, originating from the
resettlement into the Eastern regions of the country by hundreds of thousands of
Rohingyas who fled from Myanmar, and which now amount to around one million
individuals (IOM, 2018). Since the beginning of the crisis, a tension has emerged in the
scientific discussion between the necessity to protect the human rights of the refugees
and the imperative to preserve the stability of a frail, overpopulated region (Lim, 2015).
Within this context, we study the relationship between the human rights of the Rohingya
refugees settled in Bangladesh, and the necessities for security of the population residing
in the region, against the looming threat of a civil conflict.
The scientific discussion on the human rights of the Rohingyas has started long before
the most recent genocide (Brinham, 2012), and continues to date (Haar et al., 2019).
This discussion has concerned, in particular, the right of the refugees to be repatriated
in Burma and return to their houses (Faulkner and Schiffer, 2019). But also, their right
to access health (Mahmood et al., 2017) and educational structures (Prodip, 2017), the
protection against racial discrimination (Cheesman, 2017), their statelessness both in
Myanmar (Ahsan Ullah, 2016) and Bangladesh (Milton et al., 2017), and also the
interaction between multiple of these rights simultaneously (Balazo, 2015). A common
idea in the theory on human rights (Harvey, 2001) is that it should be desirable to protect
all human rights of refugees, as this would lead to an increase in their human security
(Ogata and Cels, 2003). This idea has also been suggested for application in the case of
the Rohingya refugees (Adams, 2019). We argue however in this paper that an
indiscriminate approach which does not distinguish between classes of human rights and
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their impact on political stability may inadvertently lead to cause more harm than good.
The determination as to whether the promotion of any particular human right affects
security should, in fact, be done accordingly to the known predictors of political
instability, and by considering then whether the improvement of any given human right
increases or decreases the risk of civil conflict. While the theoretical reasoning by
Thiessen (2019) suggests that it should be possible to prevent violent extremism by
means of promoting human rights, we will see however that whether this is possible
ultimately depends on what factors affect security and in what manner.
To pursue our research task, we will first discuss the theory of ethnopolitical conflicts,
within which the model we selected for predicting future conflicts has been developed.
Then, we will describe the functioning of the model itself and how it can be applied to
study the Rohingyas’ presence in Bangladesh. Subsequently, we will indicate what
predictors of future civil conflicts would be modified by the promotion of specific human
rights. And lastly, we will identify the human rights that can be safely promoted without
increasing the risk of civil conflicts, and those which cannot. Notice that, in the context
of this paper, we are searching for a causal and explanatory understanding of the subject,
we do not follow an interpretative or Verstehen approach (Parsons, 1978). The
implication for this is that we will disregard all non-behaviouristic characteristics of
conflicts, and notably all of their symbolic, ideological, cultural, or value aspects
(Harrison, 1995). If we accept this theoretical limitation and methodological assumption,
then we can draw some interesting conclusions on the relationship between human rights
and security of the Rohingyas and Bangladesh, as we will see in the next sections, so the
reliance on behaviouristic methods is in this case justified.
2. Political instability as the probability of intra-state war
Ethnic diversity in a country can be a factor of enrichment and can contribute to the
cultural diversification of the population, but it can also negatively influence the peace
and political unity of that same country. The absence of peace and political unity in a
country corresponds to a situation of international or civil conflict and is often associated
with the absence of political stability. In the literature on conflict studies, political stability
is normally defined as the stability of the government ruling in a given country (Raval
and Salvi, 2017). Not everyone agrees with this definition, though, and it has been
suggested that political stability should be considered as the perception by the population
of “the probability that the government will be destabilized or overthrown by
unconstitutional or violent means, including domestic violence and terrorism” (Radu,
2015). While we agree with the operational usefulness of this statement, we argue that
the definition provided above describes the optimism or trust of the population towards
the continuation of the government, and therefore a belief, rather than a measurable
physical and social phenomenon, like war. In equating political stability with the absence
of war it should however be noted that peace, the absence of conflict, is the most
common condition in a state, not war (Levi, 1960). The theory of peace in international
affairs initially suggested that peace is not a thing, or the absence of some-thing
[a1]
,
but rather a goal that should be sought with strife and effort (Galtung, 2007). The
definition of peace between states as a “negative war”, or the absence of war, only came
later (Martín, 2005), and it led to the theoretical consideration that political stability, also,
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is a negative concept, in the sense that it represents the absence of political instability
while not having any meaning in itself. It has subsequently been proposed to drop the
concept of political stability from the discipline of conflict studies, and to focus instead on
the analysis of its opposite concept; that is, the concept of political instability (Alesina et
al., 1996). Others have instead proposed that political stability does indeed exist, and
that it is not simply a negative condition related to the absence of intrastate conflicts
(Margolis, 2010); but we believe that the two words, “stability” and “instability”, should
refer to concepts that are opposite in nature, lest the scientific production on the subject
risks losing internal consistency. In the study by Alesina et al. (1996) political instability
has been defined simply as the propensity for a government to collapse, and in that
context political stability would be its opposite; that is, it would be the probability for a
government to survive until the next time period. In other words, political stability would
be defined as the normal “business-as-usual” situation.
For our paper we take a slightly different definition from the one suggested above:
political instability of a country is the risk of a future civil war, i.e. an intra-state conflict,
as opposed to the generic collapse of a government due to external causes. Since we
know that civil war is the least common status for a state, it is important to determine
which are the characteristics associated with its emergence in a given country. These
characteristics are also called “predictors” of civil conflicts in the associated literature
(Couttenier and Soubeyran, 2015), and the model which we selected to determine those
predictors, as we will see later, suggests that many of them have something to do with
ethnicity and discrimination.
3. Ethnic factors affecting political instability in Bangladesh
The Rohingyas in Bangladesh do not take their ethnic affiliation from the differentiation
of their language, culture, and values, from those of the other Bangladeshi ethnic groups.
As the Rohingya population in Bangladesh is comprised for the most part of refugees,
and not of resident historical population, it can only be defined as an ethnic group in
relation to the ethnicities of the country from which they have relocated in recent times.
That country is Myanmar; and in it, the ethnic affiliation of the Rohingyas was developed
and became a socially accepted construct (Alam, 2018). It is believed that religion played
an initial role in the formation of the ethnic identity of the Rohingyas, which then
constituted the basis for the linguistic and genetic differentiation of the population
(Leider, 2018). However, an even more important role was played by the revoking of the
citizenship ex autoritate of the government of Myanmar, in an attempt by the latter to
consolidate the political unity of the remaining ethnical components of the country (Alam,
2018). In moving from Myanmar to Bangladesh in recent times, the Rohingya population,
along with its understanding of its own ethnic identity, has joined a pre-existing ethnic
system as its new member. An ethnic group that has originated in a different country, in
a different ethnic system, has thus been forcefully imported into the ethnic system of
Bangladesh (Storai, 2018). In Bangladesh, the Rohingyas are an ethnic group that is
distinguished from the ethnic majority of the country, the Bangladeshis, because they
speak a different language and because their roles and rules are different from the ones
of the other ethnic components of the society (Kipgen, 2019).
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In making the previous consideration, we have therefore determined that the Rohingyas
today exist as an ethnic group in the ethnic system of Bangladesh. After defining political
instability as the probability of a civil conflict in a state, we can now discuss the ethnic
factors which contribute to the variation of that probability. The underlying idea is that,
if ethnic factors exist which predict civil conflict, they should be applied to study the
impact of the presence of the Rohingyas on the probability of civil conflict in Bangladesh.
The literature suggests that their presence is a potential threat to the country’s internal
security (Rahman, 2010), but it is not clear according to which particular indicators or
factors such a judgement should be passed.
The discipline which is competent for the study of the specific ethnic factors which are
associated with the emergence of violent conflicts is named ethnopolitical conflict studies
(Horowitz, 2000), and it emerged in the 1980s to merge the various branches of
sociology, political science, and ethnography, which were studying the subject
independently. This theory has already been applied to study the relationship between
the Rohingyas and the other ethnic communities in Myanmar (Rahman, 2015). Therefore,
we can extend it in order to study the relationship between the Rohingya refugees and
their host Bangladeshi communities, as the resettlement of the former with the latter has
already lasted for several years at the moment of writing. According to the theoretical
foundation of that discipline, the system of relationships between ethnic groups can be
divided into two main categories: ranked and unranked systems (Jenkins, 1987). Ranked
systems are characterised by the presence of stratified social hierarchies between the
different ethnicities, such that the competition between them is realised through the
dynamics of power and domination between groups. In unranked systems, on the
contrary, there is no single hierarchical relationship between the various ethnic groups
present in a state. Each group holds its structure of leadership, whose legitimacy to
govern is largely independent of the support of other ethnic groups. According to
Horowitz (2000), the unranked systems are also characterised by a generally higher level
of political stability than the ranked ones. This is because, in contrast to ranked systems,
unranked ones have an inter-ethnic competition that is based upon the principle of
inclusion and exclusion, as opposed to power and submission. The ethnic system of
Bangladesh seems to be characterised by the fact that a certain ethnic group, the group
of the Bangladeshi majority of the population, occupies most of the positions in the
leadership of the country (Khan, 1976). As a consequence of this, we believe that the
Bangladeshi ethnic system today can be classified as a ranked ethnic system. The
theoretical predictions would therefore suggest that, if we acknowledge the Bangladeshi
ethnic system as a ranked system, it then has a higher than average probability of
experiencing civil conflicts.
Another approach to the study of clashes between ethnicities is to frame ethnic conflicts
as events that occur in the process of formation of a nation-state (Varshney, 2007). The
question then arises, as to whether or not, in the event of a civil conflict, the Rohingya
community would attempt to establish an ethnic nation-state, and the theoretical
prediction suggests that it would. There is a political ideology that strongly supports the
necessity to create a Rohingya independent state, which is called “Rakhine nationalism”
(Zöllner, 2017); we believe that issue of the national independence of the Rohingyas,
and not strictly religion, were in fact at the basis of the on-going crisis in Burma. The
opinion that a latent Rohingya nationalism is causing the current humanitarian crisis is
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also discussed by other scholars such as McLaughlin (2015) and Nang (2013), and we
support the thesis that the civil war in Myanmar is a war for the repression of the
aspiration for national independence of an ethnic component of the Burmese population.
The last theoretical and methodological approach to the problem of ethnopolitical conflicts
that we discuss here is based on the paradigms of positivism and behaviourism. In that
context, it is believed that civil conflicts have causes that cannot be found in the conflicts
themselves; but rather, that these conflicts are the result of stimuli originating from the
social environment, the reaction to which leads to violence. As Barbashin (2008) points
out, “social conflicts are usually explained either as reactions to social stimulus, external
to the actor or in connection with the individual psychological or material needs”. We
accept this theoretical statement and therefore assume for the empirical part of this
paper that the factors related to the future emergence of an ethnic conflict in a country
have to be found not in the conflict itself, but on stimuli external to the actors of the
conflict. That is, of stimuli external to the warring factions in the future conflict. As we
say this, we can now proceed to analyse the model we selected to extract the predictors
of civil conflict in Bangladesh, and see how the promotion of human rights of the Rohingya
refugees might affect the risk of civil conflict.
4. The Rohingya refugee crisis and the increase in the risk of political
instability
After determining that, according to our current theoretical understanding of the
emergence of ethnic conflicts, the factors that cause them should be found in the social
environment where the actors of the conflict live, our task is then shifted to the
determination of the predictors themselves. This determination has already been done
empirically by others, and we will briefly here describe the best performing model, in its
application to Bangladesh. Several attempts have been done in the past to find the social
variables that best predict the emergence of a future civil conflict, such as those
conducted by Stewart et al. (2002) and Hegre et al. (2013). After empirical verification
on the world data related to recent civil conflicts, the determination of the most important
predictors has however been made and verified empirically. A certain statistical model
developed by Goldstone et al. (2010) has proven to be the best predictor of future civil
conflicts, and that model uses four predictors. This model has already been successfully
applied in the past to perform security assessments with specific regards to the
Rohingyas (Cook et al., 2011, Hangzo and Gong, 2013), and also to Bangladesh
(Shallcross and Ahner, 2016), independently. We thus believe it appropriate to use it to
estimate the weight of the presence of the Rohingyas in Bangladesh, concerning the risk
of civil conflict. The four predictors are:
1) Level of infant mortality.
2) Location of the political regime on the typology “liberal democratic-authoritarian”.
3) Presence of violence between state forces and local ethnic groups.
4) Presence of conflicts in the surrounding countries.
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To determine how the presence of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh affects the
political instability of the country, and thus the probability of a future civil conflict, we
can now judge whether or not the promotion of some human rights of the Rohingyas
increases the value of each of the four predictors. The theoretical prediction that one
could make, by following the theory according to which human rights promote human
security (Benedek, 2008), is that the promotion of all human rights should be correlated
with a decrease in the level of risk, as calculated accordingly to this model. To test this
theory, we will analyse each of these factors individually, to see whether there are
particular human rights of the Rohingya refugees which, as they are promoted, would
contribute positively, not negatively, to the increase in the risk of civil conflict in
Bangladesh.
4.1. Level of infant mortality
It should first of all be noted that the general level of infant and under-five mortality
among the Bangladeshi population has been decreasing in the last few years (Unicef,
2015). This is primarily due to the improvement in the health-care system of the country,
and to the improvement in the hygienic conditions of the local population (Islam and
Biswas, 2014). In contrast to this, the Rohingya refugees have significantly worse access
to healthcare and hygiene (Islam and Nuzhath, 2018), though, and therefore their health
conditions are a reason for concern. In the context of this paper, we assume that the
Rohingya population contributes to this factor of risk if the level of infant mortality among
them for a given year is higher than the corresponding average level for the Bangladeshi
population during that same year. In order to check this hypothesis, we can observe the
data available on the level of infant mortality for the general Bangladeshi residents, and
compare it with the one available for the Rohingya population, which represents a non-
random sample of the general country residents.
The authority competent for collecting and disseminating the figures related to this is the
General Surgeon of Cox’s Bazar. While not all of Cox’s Bazar is populated by Rohingyas,
they do indeed constitute the vastest majority of the local population (Bhatia et al.,
2018), and hence every medical phenomenon affecting the Rohingyas residing there is
bound to impact the aggregate data related to that district. We could find only figures
related to the level of infant mortality for Cox’s Bazar in 2015 (Chaw Nu, 2016), as it
appears that the Local Health Bulletins for other years are either not existent or not
accessible. We report here the chart contained in the Local Health Bulletin for January –
December 2015.
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Figure 1. Infant mortality in Bangladesh
The level of under-5 mortality in Cox’s Bazar in 2015 was 41.4, every 1000 live births.
In that year, the national average for infant mortality was 36.4 (Unicef, 2015), which
means that the level of infant mortality in Cox’s Bazar was significantly higher than the
one for the whole country. From this, we can conclude that the presence of the Rohingyas
in Bangladesh contributes to increasing the weight of the first known predictor of civil
conflicts. Figures are absent for years other than 2015, so further research will need to
determine whether this is a unique occurrence or a longitudinal characteristic of the
presence of the Rohingya in Bangladesh.
From the analysis of the data associated with this factor, it appears that the promotion
of the right of access to health for the Rohingya population, and in particular for their
children, would affect the level of risk of civil conflict for Bangladesh, in the sense that it
would decrease it. It thus appears that decreasing the level of infant mortality among
the Rohingyas might be a desirable policy, not only in itself but also to promote the
political stability of the region.
4.2. Classification of the regime on the typology “democratic-
autocratic”
The second known predictor of future civil conflicts is the classification of the country’s
political regime on the axis “democratic-autocratic”. More specifically, it is believed that
the less extreme the position of a country on that axis, the more likely is a country to
experience a civil war in the future. To perform this classification, the Polity IV dataset is
normally used (Marshall et al., 2011). The information reported in it is available up to
2013, and therefore it is not used to determine the current level of risk associated with
the presence of the Rohingyas, under this particular indicator. We can however study
how the Polity score is formulated, to determine whether the refugee crisis can, in
principle, influence its variation in one direction or another. While the discussion of the
full procedure for the assignment of the score of Polity to each country is outside the
scope of this paper, we do however want to note that none of the factors used are
currently affected by the presence of the Rohingyas. This is because, as of today, the
Source: (Chaw Nu, 2016). Figure drawn by the author.
776
2376
2546
2845
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
Still Births Neonatal Deaths Infant Deaths US Deaths
Total No. of Live Births in 2015: 68,732
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refugees have a limited political integration in Bangladesh (Milton et al., 2017). This of
course would change in case their political integration were promoted, such as by
granting citizenship of Bangladesh to the refugees. In principle, one could consider forms
of political integration other than citizenship, but we ask the reader to follow us for a
second, and we promise to explain shortly why the Bangladeshi citizenship of the
Rohingyas is the important integration measure that we want to study and why is it a
concern.
The argument on how political integration would affect the Polity score works like this.
Ethnic minorities in Bangladesh generally have lower access to public offices than ethnical
Bangladeshis (Barua, 2010). Should the Rohingyas be integrated into the country’s
political constituency, it is expectable that the executive recruitment might become more
restrictive, in the sense that a proportionally larger fraction of the population would not
have access to it. The two indicators Competitiveness of Executive Recruitment and
Competitiveness of Political Participation, used in Polity to determine the country’s score,
are likely to be shifted more towards authoritarianism. This would sequentially lead to an
overall strengthening of the factors associated with authoritarianism, and a subsequent
distancing from the two stable poles of liberal democracies or authoritarian systems, with
comparison to the last available figures. The reason why this factor affects human rights
is that one solution to the problem of statelessness of the Rohingyas is to give them
Bangladeshi passports, and we will see in the discussion at the end of this paper that this
is already happening. Should they become integrated into the political constituency of
Bangladesh, they are expected to not be able to access public offices, and thus this
predictor of risk would increase.
4.3. Ethnic tensions between minorities and state forces
The third known predictor of civil conflicts is the level of tensions between the state and
the ethnic minorities of the country. By level of tension, we here mean the perception or
presence of state-sponsored economic or political discrimination against a minority
(West, 2005). Accordingly to the dataset used to give values to this predictor (Gurr,
1995), the Rohingya minority, along with the Bihari, is considered at risk to initiate a
future conflict, insofar as they perceive themselves to be subject to political or economic
discrimination. Instead, the Chittagong Hill Tribes and the Hindu, which are the two other
recognised minorities in the country, are not affected by this. The reason why this
consideration is important is that the Rohingya minority, but not the other minorities of
the country, have an armed group capable of supporting the population in the clashes
with the government forces (Bashar, 2017). According to this particular predictor, it,
therefore, appears that the presence of the Rohingyas in Bangladesh is contributing to
the increase in the level of risk for civil conflict, due to the real or perceived discrimination
of the Rohingyas by the state (Ullah, 2011). The reason why the Rohingyas are not
included among the proper ethnic minorities of Bangladesh is that they do not have
citizenship, but should this occur, then all other conditions for this model would be
satisfied, and this factor would apply to them.
It is further arguable that the issue of perceived political discrimination cannot be solved
easily, as official policies for the inclusion of the Rohingyas in the Bangladeshi political
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community, as the Rohingyas are expected to remain stateless for the next future (Kiragu
et al., 2011). Now, we claimed above that if the Rohingyas are not Bangladeshi citizens,
then the problem of political discrimination against them does not apply. It would apply,
however, if political rights were granted to the Rohingyas by measures for integration
such as the granting of citizenship, or the concession of permits of residence that would
allow the refugees to vote for local elections. Because the measures for political
integration are varied and complex, and because their study is outside the scope of this
paper, we will compress the problem into a manner that makes it treatable under our
theoretical reasoning. That is to say, we consider only the political integration that takes
place through citizenship. This is because, de facto, Bangladeshi passports are being
acquired by a significant number of Rohingya refugees, and this leads at least part of the
refugee population to have access to political rights. More on this in the last section of
this paper, within the conclusions.
Economic discrimination, though, might in principle be solvable if specific economic
activities, suitable for the refugees, are found. It appears in fact that, as of today, the
economic integration of the Rohingyas in Bangladesh is not possible primarily because
the legislation forbids it (Crabtree, 2010). The Rohingya refugees are engaged especially
in sustenance-level activities, and cannot engage in legal economic activities because of
the lack of work permits and visas, but these might in principle be authorised without
granting of political rights.
4.4. Presence of other conflicts in the same region
South-East Asia is a region of the world generally characterised by conflicts (Snitwongse
and Thompson, 2005). Different authors would however have different definitions of
which countries are in a state of conflict and which ones are not, and therefore the model
uses exclusively the data contained in one particular dataset. In the model which we use,
a country is considered to be at risk of conflict if four or more countries in the same
neighbourhood are already experiencing conflicts. This binary variable is estimated based
on the information contained in the Major Episodes of Political Violence dataset (Marshall
and Cole, 2016). The neighbours of Bangladesh which experience domestic conflicts are
Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Afghanistan. These states are four and therefore account,
according to the model we are using, to a higher than average probability of future civil
conflicts in Bangladesh. It can be immediately shown that one of them, Myanmar, is
present in the dataset exactly for the same reason why the Rohingyas are also present
in Bangladesh: that is, because of the on-going conflict in that country. As a consequence
of this, this predictor for civil conflict will be relevant for as long as the conflict in Myanmar
persists. The question is then whether or not the conflict in Myanmar will continue in the
future, and whether the presence of the Rohingyas in Bangladesh is connected to the
continuation of the conflict in that country. It appears that this is the case, and it has
been suggested by Parnini (2013) that the termination of the war may not be possible
without the repatriation of the Rohingyas. Studies by Kipgen (2015) link the continued
presence of the Rohingyas in Bangladesh to the process of democratisation in Myanmar,
and this process seems also to be affected by external factors (Kuok, 2014), which cannot
be reduced to the nature of the internal affairs or the bilateral relationships between
Bangladesh and Myanmar. It, therefore, remains to be seen how this predictor will
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change in the future; as of today, it appears that, obviously, the presence of the
Rohingyas in Bangladesh is related to the conflict in Myanmar, and therefore to the
number of conflicts in the region. The promotion of the right of the Rohingyas to
repatriate in Myanmar should be a policy that decreases the level of risk of political
instability for Bangladesh, though, according to this model for assessing risks.
4.5. Human rights and political instability
We can now draw the sum of the analysis written above and determine what human
rights of the Rohingya refugees can be promoted with a positive impact on the political
stability of the region. We present the table below as a summary of this study.
Table 1 - Characteristics of a policy for integration that does not increase political instability
Predictor of civil conflict
Associated human right
Can it be promoted
without increasing the
risk of civil conflict?
Access to health
Yes
Nationality through citizenship
of Bangladeh
No
Ethnical tensions between the government and
the minorities
Nationality through citizenship
of Bangladeh
No
Presence of conflicts in the region
Repatriation of the refugees
Yes
The analysis shows that the indiscriminate promotion of all human rights of a refugee
population may not work if one includes considerations related to the political stability of
the country where the refugees reside.
4.6. A shadow case. Integration of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan
The considerations we made so far suggest that an integration policy that promotes
access to health and does not promote the political integration of the refugees, should
have a positive impact on the political stability of the country. We can now briefly study
how this idea applies in a case analogous to that of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh:
that of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan. The two cases are sufficiently similar, insofar as
they are both located in the same geographical region, and are both characterised by an
influx of refugees into the neighbouring country, as a consequence of a conflict in the
country of origin. They are also dissimilar, insofar as the ethnic composition of the Afghan
refugees is more diversified than the ethnic composition of the Rohingyas; further, the
latter, but not the former, have been escaping from a genocide that targeted their
particular ethnicity, and this may limit the possibility to compare the two cases. If we
however focus on the similarities and discard the differences, we can see what are the
characteristics of the integration policy for Afghan refugees in Pakistan, and notice
whether they conform to the features that we described in the previous section.
Regarding health, the Pakistani government has set up so-called basic health units that
were in charge of providing health services to Afghan refugees (Malik et al., 2019). This
may be related to the negative impact that the presence of Afghan refugees had on the
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epidemiological profile of infectious diseases in Pakistan, such as malaria (Jawaid et al.,
2008). It does however suggest that access to health by Afghan refugees is generally
promoted.
Regarding the political identity, and therefore the access to political rights in Pakistan, a
study by Kronenfeld (2008) suggests that “the majority of Afghans currently residing in
Pakistan were actually born there”, but that this does not grant them political rights,
because the “children of refugees are considered refugees themselves and do not have
Pakistani citizenship” (op. cit., 2008: 49). This suggests that the political integration of
Afghan refugees in Pakistan is limited.
Preliminarily, therefore, we observe in Pakistan an integration policy of the refugees
analogous to the one that, according to our model, should favour political stability.
Further, the literature that contains risk assessments for the political stability of Pakistan
(Tabassam et al., 2016) does not contain mentions of the risks deriving from the
presence of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, if not indirectly as a consequence of the general
economic conditions that affect indiscriminately the whole resident population. If we use
the case of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan as a test-bed for the hypothesis that we
formulated in this paper, therefore, we observe that an integration policy that possesses
characteristics such as the one that we studied here has been adopted for Pakistan. We
also observe that the risk assessments for the country do not contain mentions of the
political instability potentially arising out of the presence of the refugees. This suggests
that the line of reasoning proposed in this paper may be generalizable to cases other
than the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, provided that other assumptions are also
adopted, and notably those regarding the ethnic composition of the refugees.
5. Conclusions. Indiscriminately promoting all human rights may not
necessarily be good, if considerations on political stability are also
factored
In this paper, we have analysed the factors of risk which are associated with the presence
of the Rohingya refugee population in Bangladesh. After defining political instability as
the presence of a civil conflict, and after discussing its general theoretical causes, and
also after analysing the best performing model for its prediction, we have studied how
the known factors of risk for civil conflict are affected by measures for the promotion of
the refugees’ rights. From our findings, it appears that access to health and repatriation
of the refugees could be generally promoted, as they would have a positive impact on
the stability of the territory; but granting political rights through the nationality of
Bangladesh may not. This allows us to suggest that, while promoting human rights is an
important objective, promoting those that are expected to start wars is undesirable. After
all, human rights are not useful if you are dead.
Why is all of this important? The reason why the considerations we make here are
particularly important is that political rights are de facto being granted today
(Chakraborty, 2018, The Straits Times, 2019, The Business Standard, 2020). Foreigners
can acquire Bangladeshi passports by illegal means, and through the passports, they also
acquire political rights. This is a problem not only because it is a crime, but also because
it is a practice that, if it continues to spread, may affect the risk of civil war. According
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to the theoretical framework defined above, the inclusion of the Rohingyas within the
political constituency of Bangladesh is predictably going to increase the risk of civil
conflict in the country. If signs of political mobilisation of the Rohingya refugees who
acquired the Bangladeshi passports will be seen in the future, this should be considered
as a strong indication that the risk of civil conflict in the country is rising, according to
the theoretical predictions of the model we follow. In this particular context, the
continuation of the statelessness of the refugees might be a more desirable option than
nationality through the Bangladeshi passport. On the other hand, though, the promotion
of health-related rights can be pursued safely; because as the model suggests, should
infant mortality decrease, so would the risk of civil conflict. A similar consideration is also
valid for the repatriation of the Rohingyas which, would the political conditions in
Myanmar allow it, could be pursued with a positive impact on the stability of Bangladesh
and thus the region. The general theoretical development on the discussion on human
rights and security that we propose with this paper is the following. When any given
refugee situation is being studied, and when the presence of the Rohingyas in Bangladesh
is being studied in particular, not all human rights can be promoted equally, and the
promotion of some of them may end up causing more harm than good.
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