In HPAIR 2019’s Harvard conference, I participated in a challenge that prompted us to come up with a workable policy solution to an Asian humanitarian crisis. Leading this activity was the UNHCR and CARE from New York City and Washington, DC who briefed us on the humanitarian situations in Yemen, Afghanistan, and Myanmar. We were then given about six hours to research, design, and present the outline of a policy solution to each of these crises.
Though teams were randomly assigned, I felt the assignment has been unfair – particularly for my team. Among the four of us was a Chinese PhD student in social sciences, a practicing international law attorney in Nepal, and a human rights lawyer from Thailand, and myself. With such close proximity to Myanmar, we chose to take on the challenge of coming up with a solution for the Rohingya refugee crisis.
At first, we had no idea what we were supposed to do. How were four people, whose ages added up to less than 95 years, supposed to come up with a solution to a problem that has existed for seven decades? Upon researching the background of the crisis and viewing local challenges through the lens of lawyers, we decided on the following objectives for our yet to be developed solution:
- Preserve as many lives as possible, while
- Providing as dignified a living environment as possible, with the final goal of
- Restoring people to their homes in a safe environment.
While we were still developing our plans and looking for case studies of possible solutions from the past, we realized that the plan may have to span several decades. Ms. Joung-Ah Ghedini-Williams was one of the panelists that day so we asked her one of our most pertinent questions: “How long does it take for refugees to return home?” To which she answered: “The average time that refugees spend away from their homes is 17 years.”
Find out about how my team proposed to connect rural Malaysia to 4G internet in HPAIR 2018.
We looked at the Free City of Trieste, Vietnamese Boat People, and other instances where asylees sought refuge as protected persons. All of these crises were spread across decades before a final resolution was reached so we set a 40-year timeline for our solution. It would be near-impossible in the current state of geopolitics in Southeast Asia to carve out a new piece of land for a free city for protected persons and establishing one may cause refugees from other nations to flock there.
Myanmar is physically near Vietnam, we researched how Vietnamese Boat People were processed back in the 1970’s to see if we could replicate what was done back then. Vietnam faces the South China Sea making island nations like Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore more accessible to them than Myanmar. Once they arrived there, they were interned in refugee camps where they were processed for asylum in another country.
Since some of the refugee camp infrastructure still exists on remote islands like Galang (just an hour boat ride away from Singapore), it made sense to reactivate those sites for use with the Rohingya refugee crisis. The reason for not building new camps in Cox’s Bazaar or on the Bangladeshi side of the Burmese-Bangladeshi border is because Bangladesh is already a very densely populated country with frequent natural disasters. Malaysia and Indonesia are both Muslim nations, making them relatively safe for Rohingya to flee to.
The Rohingya Resettlement Program (RRP, but not recommended retail pricing) consists of the following three steps:
- Temporarily settle refugees in processing camps,
- Improve the legal environment in Myanmar within 30 years,
- Repatriate refugees to their homes once the situation stabilizes.
The refugee camps can accommodate around 500 000 refugees within six months of reactivation with the target of accommodating 1 000 000 people with expansion efforts within the first two years. While nations like Malaysia and Indonesia will provide the land, other nations will contribute necessary funding and in-kind support to the camps for the duration of the RRP.
Refugees will be transported from Bangladesh and Thailand (hotspots for Rohingya refugees to escape to) by boat to the various processing facilities. Transportation will be organized by international organizations with funding from its member states or from appeals to individual donors.
Each camp is separated into two sections: the pre-processing section and the post-processing section. The pre-processing section is used to house refugees awaiting processing by foreign nations to take them on as refugees in their respective countries. The post-processing section provides language, cultural, and vocational education to help the refugees integrate into their host countries.
International organizations can work out of their offices in Singapore conveniently since many of the camps are within hours of Singapore. The International Criminal Court will then setup a court in Singapore with investigatory offices in Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Thailand to support the prosecution of Burmese officials with suspected human rights violations.
The change of Myanmar’s legal system and the prosecution of its leaders will likely take a lengthy period of time. This systemic change in providing for the equal treatment of all people will likely take decades. Regional organizations like ASEAN are critical in applying international pressure to speed up the process of reconciliation between human rights and the exercise of local laws.
When the local situation improves, those in the pre-processing sections of processing facilities will be repatriated to Myanmar. Those that have resettled in foreign countries will be repatriated in stages depending on their conditions of stay.
This transplantation of a population into more humane and dignified conditions of living will save lives offer the opportunity for internal change in Myanmar.
