Blog post by Hasna Khan, a Legal Fellow at the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security.
The Rohingya crisis exemplifies a pivotal juncture in modern international relations, underscoring a critical tension between two fundamental principles: the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and state sovereignty. Since 2017, the Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority in Myanmar, have faced systematic persecution, leading to large-scale displacement and an ongoing humanitarian emergency. Currently, over one million Rohingya refugees reside in Bangladesh, with the situation showing little prospect for resolution. This crisis raises salient legal and ethical questions about the extent to which the international community can or should intervene under the auspices of the R2P doctrine, and how this obligation reconciles with Myanmar’s claims to sovereignty.
The R2P Doctrine: Origins and Scope
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine emerged in 2005 at the United Nations World Summit, as a response to the international community’s failure to prevent the genocides in Rwanda (1994) and Srebrenica (1995). Codified as a global political commitment, R2P establishes that the primary responsibility to protect a population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity lies with the state. However, if a state is unable or unwilling to fulfill this responsibility, the international community bears a subsidiary obligation to intervene, utilizing diplomatic, humanitarian, or even military measures as a last resort.
The R2P principle is grounded in a fundamental shift in the conceptualization of state sovereignty. Traditionally, sovereignty was viewed as an absolute right of states, rooted in the Westphalian system. R2P, in contrast, reconceptualized sovereignty as contingent on a state’s ability to safeguard the rights and dignity of its population. If a state violates this fundamental responsibility, it forfeits a degree of its protective shield against external intervention.
The Rohingya crisis has been widely acknowledged as a situation where the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle is applicable, given the extensive violence and systematic discrimination experienced by the Rohingya minority. However, attempts to implement R2P in Myanmar have faced significant challenges, primarily due to the tensions between the principle of national sovereignty and the international community’s obligations.
The Persecution of the Rohingya: An Ethnic Cleansing Campaign
The Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim minority group residing in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, have endured decades of institutionalized discrimination. The Myanmar government has persistently denied them citizenship under the 1982 Citizenship Law, effectively rendering the Rohingya stateless and highly vulnerable to mistreatment. Over time, they have been subjected to restrictions on mobility, access to education, healthcare, and fundamental civil rights, further exacerbating their marginalization within the country.
In 2017, the situation in Myanmar’s Rakhine State escalated dramatically when the country’s military launched a campaign that the United Nations has characterized as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Under the pretext of responding to attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the military carried out widespread atrocities against the Rohingya civilian population, including extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, and the destruction of entire Rohingya communities. This resulted in the displacement of over700,000 Rohingya refugees who fled to Bangladesh, joining the hundreds of thousands who had previously been forced to seek refuge due to earlier waves of violence.
Numerous international human rights organizations, including the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, have documented these crimes, leading to intensified calls for accountability. While the International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened an investigation into the crimes committed against the Rohingya, and The Gambia has brought a case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for violating the Genocide Convention, the government and military of Myanmar have refused to acknowledge the full scope of the atrocities, emphasizing instead their claims of sovereignty and internal security concerns.
The Clash Between R2P and National Sovereignty
The principle of national sovereignty remains deeply ingrained within the United Nations system and international law, especially in the Security Council where veto-wielding powers can block intervention in a state’s domestic affairs. Myanmar, bolstered by the political and economic backing of China and Russia, has invoked its sovereignty to shield itself from international oversight. Consequently, China and Russia have persistently vetoed or weakened Security Council resolutions aimed at addressing the Rohingya crisis, citing non-interference in Myanmar’s internal matters.
This impasse reveals a fundamental shortcoming of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine: while it calls for collective international action, it lacks robust enforcement mechanisms. In the case of Myanmar, geopolitical interests have superseded humanitarian imperatives, rendering meaningful R2P-based action through the Security Council virtually impossible. The Rohingya crisis serves as a stark reminder that the international community’s capacity to act under R2P is contingent on the political will of key states, which often prioritize national interests over human rights concerns.
Although the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine calls for international intervention when states fail to safeguard their populations, it remains constrained by the principle of state sovereignty and the requirement for consent. The unwillingness of influential nations to infringe upon Myanmar’s sovereignty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of ethnic cleansing, underscores the limitations inherent in the R2P framework.
Refugee Protection and the Role of Bangladesh
While the international community’s failure to intervene in Myanmar is evident, Bangladesh has borne the brunt of the refugee crisis. Despite its constrained resources, Bangladesh has provided refuge to over one million Rohingya, housing them in the expansive camps of Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee settlement. The Bangladeshi government, led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, had framed its response as a moral imperative, yet the strain on its resources has become increasingly unsustainable.
Bangladesh has repeatedly called for the international community to pressure Myanmar into creating conditions conducive to the safe and voluntary return of Rohingya refugees. However, repatriation efforts have stalled, as the Rohingya fear continued persecution upon their return to Myanmar, and Myanmar has exhibited little willingness to accept them back. The 2017 bilateral repatriation agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh has largely failed, due to the absence of any meaningful guarantees of safety for the returning Rohingya.
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine has provided limited direct assistance to Bangladesh in addressing the Rohingya refugee crisis. While R2P calls for international action to protect vulnerable populations, the international community’s response has predominantly taken the form of financial and humanitarian aid, rather than direct intervention or addressing the underlying causes of the crisis in Myanmar. The lack of stronger international sanctions or military intervention against Myanmar under the R2P framework highlights the limitations of the current international legal order in overcoming deeply-rooted political and sovereignty-based concerns.
Can International Refugee Law Enforce R2P?
The refugee crisis catalyzed by Myanmar’s persecution of the Rohingya minority raises broader questions concerning the interplay between refugee law and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework. The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol provide international legal protection for those fleeing persecution, yet these instruments lack enforcement mechanisms to prevent states from instigating displacement in the first place. Refugee law primarily addresses the rights of individuals once they have crossed international borders, whereas R2P aims to prevent mass atrocities within sovereign states.
In theory, these two frameworks should be complementary: R2P can function as a preventative mechanism, while refugee law offers safeguards for those who have already been displaced. However, the weak enforcement of R2P has undermined its potential to avert refugee crises such as the Rohingya exodus. Without concrete action from the international community to halt atrocities at their source, refugee law remains a reactive instrument, addressing the consequences rather than the root causes of forced displacement.
Conclusion
The Rohingya crisis starkly highlights the conflict between the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the concept of national sovereignty. While R2P provides a moral and legal framework for international intervention in cases of mass atrocities, the reality is that state sovereignty, often backed by geopolitical interests, frequently takes precedence over the responsibility to safeguard vulnerable populations. In the case of Myanmar, the international community’s failure to act decisively has left over one million Rohingya refugees in a precarious situation, with little prospect of a secure return.
Moving forward, the international community must find more effective ways to reconcile the principles of sovereignty and protection. This requires not only the political will to do so, but also the development of stronger enforcement mechanisms for the R2P doctrine. Until then, crises similar to that of the Rohingya will continue to expose the limitations of the international legal order in addressing the most egregious human rights violations of our time.
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