Brutality and violence against different religious and ethnic groups are not new subjects in the history of humanity. In every corner of the world, from its inception to this date, a huge number of people have been facing humanitarian crises based on ethnicity and religion. Back in history, there were empires and states with their own laws and orders that couldn’t be questioned, but the flip of the system and the establishment of international order and laws of governance intensified the question of why the situation seems to be no different? This writing aims to address the vulnerabilities of Muslims in the southeast and the Middle East, further examining the efforts of the global governance system, the comparative analysis of international responses, and the role of international institutions towards Rohingya and Palestinian Muslims. This article illustrates how the regional dynamics and interests of regional powers result in weak strategies and solutions for regional crises of international nature.
Rohingya are the ethnic minority in Myanmar and the most persecuted people in the world. They are situated mainly in the Rahkine province of Myanmar, which borders Cox’s Bazar, a district in Bangladesh. The Myanmese government does not recognize Rohingya Muslims as citizens, according to the Myanmese Rohingya denotes the ethno-religious identity of Muslims in North Rakhine State. Different historians shape different histories of Rohingya Muslims. During British rule, many people migrated from today’s India and Bangladesh to Myanmar as laborers. This historical migration was even unacceptable to natives at the time, and till now, Myanmar considers it illegal. Thus, the Union Citizenship Act was passed after independence from the British and defines which ethnic groups are considered citizens of Myanmar.
To this date, many Rohingya Muslims have no citizenship in Myanmar, owing to a 2015 report by the International Human Rights Clinic. The already turbulent situation for Rohingya became more drastic with the 1962 military coup in Myanmar, under which Rohingya were given foreign identity cards with limited opportunities. The final blow was made in 1982, when a new set of citizenship laws was passed, refusing Rohingya, an ethnic group of Myanmar, and raising hostilities towards Rohingya by Myanmar, resulting in huge displacements and taking refuge in neighboring countries. The number of refugee camps of Rohingya people on the Bangladesh border is increasing with time. However, the National Unity Government of Myanmar has recognized the Rohingya identity as expected, but massacres, rape, violence, and humanitarian losses of Rohingya Muslims have been carried out to this date, rendering the global governance system ineffective.
Unlike Rohingya Muslims, the land of Palestine belonged to Palestinians for decades. During the British and Dutch periods of colonization, the Jewish migrations supported by the Balfour Declaration of 1917 gradually made the majority of Palestinian Muslims a minority under Jewish rule. Since that period of time, Palestinians have remained the subject of Jewish brutality and illegal occupations of Palestinian territories. The matter was handed over to the United Nations in 1947, but to this date, the demands and legal rights of Palestinian Muslims have not received their due attention. And the persecution of Muslims by Israeli forces is still at its peak. The roots of both crises lie in the unjust, improper, and biased departure of the British from their colonies, leaving behind a number of unaddressed conflicts and disputes that become wider with time.
One of the similarities that both sides have been facing is the emergence of non-state actors, such as militants of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army and Hamas in Palestine, with their own interests or might to defend their people, creating further complexities. In Rohingya, the constant hostility between the Arakan Army (representing Rakhine’s Buddhist majority fighting for the region’s autonomy) and the Myanmar military drags innocent Rohingya Muslims into the fight, depriving them of their basic needs. The military that took control in 2021 used the children of an already suppressed community to fight against the Arakan Army.
As per the latest report from Al Jazeera, war crimes against Rohingya Muslims by both the military and civilians are outnumbered. Ahead towards genocide against Palestinian Muslims, which the world had never seen before as the result of a war between a non-state actor, Hamas, and Israeli forces, took the lives of more than 38,000 people, leaving millions homeless. The UN human rights office and the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health reported that the number of deaths published during the conflicts was much higher, questioning the efforts of international players and global governance institutions.
The United Nations has been raising voices for Rohingya Muslims, with a report released in 2018 by a UN fact-finding panel that claimed the Myanmar government had “genocidal intent” against the Rohingya. From 2012 to 2017, Rohingya Muslims were given legal status in India, supported by UNHRC, but later in 2017, India launched an anti-Muslim campaign, labeling them illegal under the rule of the BJP. In 2020, the UN urged Myanmar to end military operations against Rohingya refugees. In January 2020, the International Court of Justice ordered Myanmar to take provisional measures to address the devastation of Muslims in Rakhine, but the humanitarian crisis keeps on increasing. The issue of Israel-Palestine has been under UN provision since 1947, after the Hamas attack on October 7.
The UN adopted a resolution calling for an immediate, durable humanitarian truce. The United Nations Security Council presented an effective resolution for a ceasefire multiple times but was unfortunately vetoed by the US 30 times owing to the biased structure of international institutions. OIC efforts to end the turmoil in Gaza also seemed to be overshadowed by the national interests of its members. Comparing the maneuvering of regional players in both cases draws a picture of a realistic world order where every state is concerned with its national interests.
Talking about Southeast Asia, the major states, such as China’s strategic interest in Myanmar, use it as a containment policy against India and BRI; similarly, India’s interests in Myanmar are followed by a containment policy against China; Myanmar acts as a hub of natural resources and trade for Russia; and moreover, all three states are facing problems with Muslims in their own countries. On the other side, Palestine is surrounded by a number of Muslim states that have been raising their voices against the inhuman activities of Israel against Muslim brothers of Palestine; however, their voices faded due to their strategic relations with Israel, which could be seen by the signing of the Abrahamic Accords of 2020 by the UAE, Jordan, and Bahrain with Tel Aviv. Saudi Arabia was also on the edge of normalizing relations with Israel soon before the Hamas attack on October 7.
The essence of the writing lies in the fact that the global governance system and international organizations are a web made of states, making one world order of an anarchic nature; hence, the structure of these institutions halts the effective implementation of solutions to prevent human rights violations, genocide, humanitarian crises, and the massacre of millions of innocent Muslims in Rohingya, Palestine, Chechens, Uyghurs, and Kashmir. Moreover, the ineffectiveness of global governance institutions could be the result of superpower influence and state regional and national interests. The need is to revise the policies and structures to establish rational institutions where the value of human life is greater than any political or economic interests.
The author, Zainab Sheikh, is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s in International Relations with a keen interest in global affairs and diplomacy. She specializes in Southeast Asian geopolitics, conducting thorough analyses of the region's complexities.
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