‘Resolve Rohingya refugee crisis through diplomacy’

Experts say issue should not be linked to problems regarding the stateless people

Left homeless: A Rohingya refugee holds her granddaughter outside a makeshift shelter at Balukhali refugee camp near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

Even though the crisis concerning Rohingya refugees in India seems to have subsided, veteran experts on statelessness and refugees have called for resolving the issue through diplomacy.

Pointing out that the Rohingyas form a category distinct from stateless people in the country, K.M. Parivelan, associate professor and chairperson of the Centre for Statelessness and Refugee Studies at the School of Law, Rights and Constitutional Governance (SLRCG) Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), says the Rohingya issue need not be linked to problems regarding the stateless people.

According to an estimate, there are 40,000 Rohingyas living in different States of India.

He elaborates that India, using its goodwill with Myanmar, can convince the latter of the need for resolving the problem in a ‘humane way’ and providing to the affected people rights on a par with citizens of the south-east Asian country.

V. Suryanarayan, former Head of Department of South and South Asian Studies, University of Madras, says the Indian government should persuade Bangladesh to “look after them, after all they came through that country.” The problem with Bangladesh is that it “does not provide job opportunities,” as a result of which Rohingyas migrate to other countries.

‘Central govt. to blame’

Talking of the problem of stateless people in India, Dr. Parivelan finds fault with the Central government, which, he says, “has no clue about who stateless people are.” Pointing out that there are different categories of stateless people, he says many States in the country have such people, whose case is different from each other. He cites the examples of “illegal migrants” from Bangladesh; Sri Lankan refugees in Tamil Nadu whose ancestors were taken to the neighbouring country during the British Raj and refugees in Jammu and Kashmir who came from Pakistan.

Emphasising the need for proper identification of stateless people across the country, the academician suggests that legal reforms, taking a cue from the 1954 UN Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on Reduction of Statelessness, be made.

Prof.Suryanarayan says the problem of statelessness will never end in the south Asian region as countries in and around India are making policies based on religions and languages of the majority.

“Ethnic conflict in these countries will continue,” he says, adding that those affected by such policies can hope to get Indian citizenship in future in the event of the 2016 Citizenship Bill getting passed. The legislation has sought to reduce the number of years for getting citizenship by naturalisation from 11 years to six years.

Inaugurating a two-day conference on statelessness organised by the Centre for Statelessness and Refugee Studies, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Statelessness Network Asia-Pacific on Thursday here, Yasuko Shimizu, Chief of Mission, UNHCR India, referred to the examples of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Vietnam in sorting out issues concerning statelessness.