This article postulates that Myanmar’s long-discarded ethnic minority group, the
Rohingya
people
in Rakhine State, has a multifaceted characteristic—refugees, internally displaced persons, and stateless
people
. They have one common theme—the most persecuted minority in the world. This paper investigates their plight from its origins in the nineteenth century up to now and argues that ASEAN needs to consider on the applicability of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm to eradicate their plight. Interference, however, would be an unorthodox diplomatic move that violates ASEAN’s long-guarded non-interference principle.
The justifications for interference are three-fold: the Rohingyas are “stateless”
people
with no governmental protection for their right to life; they fall victim to the inter-communal violence that was invoked by nationalistic Buddhist movements; and their evacuation from the deteriorating human rights conditions on the ground puts their life into jeopardy at sea, and they are subject to human trafficking at a later stage.
The United Nations World Summit Outcome Document stipulated the R2P norm in 2005. ASEAN member states verbally accepted this norm’s emergence in the first instance, but are at odds with its introduction into regional politics. To examine the theoretical and policy application of it, we do not take this norm’s localization in Southeast Asia for granted.
This piece categorizes three types of arguments over the R2P and its localization within the ASEAN area when we examine the
Rohingya
issues in Myanmar and beyond. First, there are “accommodationsit” that say that the state sovereignty can be reconciled with humanitarian needs and imperative situations faced with the
Rohingya
’s plight. “Incrementalist” contend that ASEAN has endeavored to create a caring society for its
people
by establishing new institutions to promote and protect human rights and fundamental values. The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, as an overarching institution of the kind, is a case in point. Despite some institutional deficiencies, it has at least a “tongue”—promoting and protecting ASEAN
people
’s fundamental rights as encapsulated in the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration(2012). Incrementalist can view these existing legal frameworks, humanitarian and human rights instruments, to which the ASEAN member states have acceded, as the window of opportunity for a possible localization of R2P in the region. Finally, “Scepticist” regard the R2P’s localization as premature, since the ardent advocacy for the norm comes from external regional non-state actors. This makes the scepticist doubt that decision-makers in ASEAN really take the norm seriously.
In light of the events surrounding the Rohingyas from 2012 onwards, these three claims have been examined. The incrementalist view on R2P, supported by various ASEAN documents, seems to have gained ground. The ASEAN foreign ministers’ retreat meeting on December 2016 paved the way for ASEAN’s pragmatic application of R2P principle, without embarrassing Myanmar by directly alluding to the R2P. This article concludes that the gap between the non-interference principle and the humanitarian norm appears to be narrowing in the case of Myanmar’s
Rohingya
issues.
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