For nearly eight years, the Rohingya crisis has remained one of the world’s most intractable humanitarian tragedies. Close to one million Rohingya refugees continue to live in limbo inside the crowded camps of Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, unable to return to their ancestral homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Forced out in 2017 during what the United States and the United Nations have both described as genocide, the Rohingya face dwindling humanitarian aid, deteriorating camp conditions, and the crushing despair of statelessness.

Despite repeated promises by governments and international institutions to facilitate their safe repatriation, every initiative has ended in failure. Buses have been lined up, agreements signed, and pilot schemes announced, but the refugees themselves have refused to board. The reason is simple: they do not believe they will be safe if they go back – and, judging by the situation inside Myanmar, they are right.

The question is no longer whether repatriation attempts have failed – the record is clear. The pressing question now is why they keep failing, and what must be done differently to prevent the Rohingya from becoming yet another permanently exiled population.

The most glaring flaw in past repatriation attempts lies in their design. From the beginning, negotiations have been conducted almost exclusively between Dhaka and Myanmar’s military junta. This approach ignored three essential realities on the ground.

First, the junta, while officially in control of Myanmar’s government, lacks legitimacy and does not hold........

© Blitz