Written by Tilourshita Thiagu, Senior Content Writer
A child is born in the world’s largest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Her first cries echo through a tarpaulin shelter patched with bamboo. But unlike most newborns, her existence will not be marked on any national registry. She has no birth certificate, no citizenship, no country that claims her. On paper, she does not exist. She is Rohingya, and from the moment she enters the world, she is stateless (UNHCR, n.d.).
Statelessness is not just the absence of nationality; it is the denial of belonging. For the Rohingya, it has been a weapon of persecution for decades. In 1982, Myanmar’s military government passed the Citizenship Law, which excluded the Rohingya from its list of recognised “national races.” From that moment, nearly a million people who had lived for generations in Rakhine State were stripped of citizenship (Council on Foreign Relations, 2020). Without legal recognition, access to healthcare, education, and jobs became a significant challenge. A 24-year-old Rohingya man who was not allowed to finish his degree told Amnesty International (2017): “I have dreams, but I can’t fulfil my dreams. I wanted to be a school teacher, but now I have no chance. There is no hope”. Statelessness was not a side effect of discrimination. It was the instrument of it.
The consequences have been catastrophic. In 2017, the Myanmar military launched what the UN called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Entire villages were razed, men executed, women raped, and children burned alive (The Guardian, 2017). More than 700,000 Rohingya fled across the border into Bangladesh (Oxfam, 2017). Today, nearly one million live in overcrowded refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, reliant on dwindling humanitarian aid (UNHCR, 2024). Another 600,000 remain in Rakhine under apartheid-like restrictions (Human Rights Watch, 2022). Without citizenship, there is no path to rights, no access to justice, and no protection from further atrocities. Statelessness ensures their persecution is permanent.
International law recognises the horror of statelessness, but it has failed to prevent it. The 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness provide frameworks, but Myanmar is not a party to either (University of Melbourne, 2023). The International Court of Justice has ordered Myanmar to protect the Rohingya from genocide, yet its provisional measures remain ignored (Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, 2022). Bangladesh, meanwhile, hosts nearly a million Rohingya but refuses to grant them formal refugee status, fearing permanent settlement (Amnesty International, 2020). The result is limbo: a people without a state, a future, or even a name in the eyes of the law.
This is not only a regional crisis, it is a global indictment. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right to nationality (UDHR, 1948). The Convention on the Rights of the Child guarantees every child the right to be registered at birth (CRC, 1989). These are not ideals, nor aspirations. They are binding obligations. Yet every day, Rohingya children are born into a void, their rights stripped away before they can speak.
What is needed now is not another round of hand-wringing at the UN, but concrete action. First, Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law must be repealed or amended to restore full citizenship to the Rohingya (OHCHR, 2023). Without this, repatriation is meaningless, as it would return refugees to the same system that erased them. Second, Bangladesh must grant Rohingya legal refugee status and access to education and work permits, recognising that indefinite containment in camps is both unsustainable and inhumane (Amnesty International, 2020). Finally, ASEAN must step beyond its doctrine of non-interference and confront Myanmar’s abuses, developing a regional protocol to protect stateless populations (Arifin, 2023).
Statelessness is erasure. It is the systematic stripping away of identity until nothing remains but vulnerability. To be stateless is to live invisible, to die uncounted, to have your existence treated as negotiable. The Rohingya did not lose a country; a country chose to erase them.
Every child born in Cox’s Bazar without a birth certificate is not just a symbol of humanitarian failure. They are a reminder that international law, in its current form, has teeth only for those willing to comply. Until the world forces Myanmar, and the international system itself, to reckon with this erasure, the message remains clear: for the Rohingya, belonging is a privilege denied, and statelessness is the cage that keeps them silent.
References
Amnesty International. (2017). Myanmar: “Caged without a roof” – Apartheid in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/myanmar-apartheid-against-rohingya
Amnesty International. (2020). Bangladesh pushes back Rohingya refugees amid collective punishment in Myanmar. https://amnesty.org.nz/bangladesh-pushes-back-rohingya-refugees-amid-collective-punishment myanmar
Arifin, S. (2023). Abuse of human rights in Myanmar: An urgent appeal to reinterpret the ASEAN non interference principle. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366661074_Abuse_of_Human_Rights_in_Myanmar_A n_Urgent_Appeal_to_Reinterpret_the_ASEAN_Non-Interference_Principle
Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK. (2022). Five years on: World Court orders to protect the Rohingya still being ignored. https://brouk.org.uk/five-years-on-world-court-orders-to-protect-the-rohingya-still-being-ignored/
Council on Foreign Relations. (2020). The Rohingya crisis. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/rohingya-crisis
Human Rights Watch. (2022). Myanmar: No justice, no freedom for Rohingya five years on. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/08/24/myanmar-no-justice-no-freedom-rohingya-5-years
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). (2023). Myanmar: Authorities must ensure full legal recognition of right to citizenship. https://www.ohchr.org/en/meeting-summaries/2023/06/myanmar-authorities-must-ensure-full-leg al-recognition-right-citizenship
The Guardian. (2017, September 11). UN: Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingya a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/11/un-myanmars-treatment-of-rohingya-textbook example-of-ethnic-cleansing
Oxfam. (2017). Bangladesh Rohingya refugee crisis. https://www.oxfam.org/en/what-we-do/emergencies/bangladesh-rohingya-refugee-crisis
UDHR. (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
UNHCR. (n.d.). Rohingya refugee crisis. UN Refugee Agency. https://www.unrefugees.org/emergencies/rohingya-refugee-crisis/
UNHCR. (2024). Rohingya refugee crisis explained. https://www.unrefugees.org/news/rohingya-refugee-crisis-explained/
University of Melbourne. (2023). Ratification of the two UN Statelessness Conventions in the Asia-Pacific. https://law.unimelb.edu.au/centres/statelessness/education/factsheet/ratification-of-the-two-un-st atelessness-conventions-in-the-asia-pacific
