We reiterate our call for international action to end impunity, and to restore full rights to and ensure protection for all targeted religious and ethnic communities in Rakhine State and across Myanmar.

On 25 August 2017, the Myanmar military launched pre-planned "clearance operations" across northern Rakhine State, characterized by widespread massacres, mass rape, extrajudicial executions, forced displacement, and the systematic destruction of hundreds of villages. Nine years on, more than one million Rohingya remain stranded in precarious refugee camps in Bangladesh, while approximately 600,000 who remain in Myanmar face severe, ongoing violations of their Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB), extreme restrictions on freedom of movement, and conditions amounting to apartheid.

CSW notes that the genocide against the Rohingya was not an isolated event, but part of a long-standing process rooted in decades of state-sponsored identity-based discrimination. In its landmark report Burma’s Identity Crisis: How ethno-religious nationalism has led to religious intolerance, crimes against humanity and genocide, CSW documented how extreme Buddhist nationalism, state-backed dangerous speech, and discriminatory legislation, such as the 1982 Citizenship Law, created the structural conditions for mass atrocity crimes.

Furthermore, in a briefing titled, Genocide Response and Early Warnings, the Plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar, CSW highlighted how UN atrocity prevention frameworks and early warning risk factors—including structural discrimination, weak state structures, and unaddressed human rights violations—were ignored prior to 2017, warning that failing to act on these indicators continues to perpetuate cycles of violence and impunity.

Today, the security situation in Rakhine State is further compounding this history of trauma. Clashes between the military junta and non-state armed groups, including the Arakan Army, have left Rohingya civilians trapped in a dangerous secondary wave of abuses, including forced recruitment, arbitrary detention, extortion, and targeted displacement. The UN Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) has warned that returning refugees would be entering an active warzone, where communities remain devastated by years of violence, unlawful killings, systemic land destruction, and a complete lack of legal protections, making safe, voluntary, and dignified return impossible at present.

Meanwhile, bilateral negotiations across the region, such as recent announcements regarding potential repatriation agreements between regional host governments and the military regime, risk placing refugees at further risk if conducted without structural safety guarantees, citizenship restoration, land rights, and genuine consultation with civil society.

Writing in an article for DVB on the enduring connection of the Rohingya to their homeland and the resilience of civil society despite ongoing attempts at erasure, Rohingya human rights defender Yasmin Ullah, co-founder of the Rohingya Maiyafuinor Collaborative Network, said: 'They can burn our villages. They can expel our people. They can deny our history. They can rewrite our names. But they cannot make us forget where home is. The border could not erase Arakan. Genocide could not erase us... Arakan is still there. So are we.'

CSW’s External Affairs Team Leader Kiri Kankhwende said: 'Nine years after the horrific atrocities of 2017, the Rohingya people continue to suffer the severe consequences of unresolved genocide and systematic denial of their fundamental human rights. As CSW has repeatedly emphasised in our research on ethno-religious nationalism and genocide early warning indicators, political trade-offs and premature repatriation schemes into warzones only serve to embolden perpetrators. True peace in Myanmar cannot be achieved through ethno-religious exclusion or by normalising relations with a genocidal military junta. We emphasise strongly that a sustainable, peaceful future for Myanmar requires full ethno-religious inclusion and political recognition of all communities, alongside genuine structural accountability for perpetrators of international crimes.

'We therefore call on the international community to enforce stringent targeted sanctions against junta leadership, state owned enterprises and entities supplying aviation fuel used in indiscriminate aerial attacks against civilians, alongside support for ongoing international justice mechanisms at the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice. States must also support refugees by increasing aid and strictly enforcing the principle of non-refoulement until conditions in Rakhine State allow for their safe, voluntary and dignified return with full rights, doing all they can to ensure that all stakeholders in Myanmar uphold universal human rights and freedom of religion or belief for every community.'