Why aid groups, and Rohingya themselves, should stop using the term ‘stateless’

The use of the terms “stateless” or “statelessness” when referring to the Rohingya population is demotivating and inaccurate, says Aung Kyaw Moe, who serves as a human rights advisor to Myanmar’s National Unity Government –  the civilian government-in-exile formed in the wake of the February 2021 military coup. He’s calling for aid organisations to stop using the nomenclature and for all Rohingya to admonish its use. “We belong to Myanmar and Myanmar belongs to us, and we existed prior to Myanmar in the region, and so calling us stateless is not the appropriate term,” Aung Kyaw Moe, who is originally from Rakine state and a Rohingya himself, told The New Humanitarian. More than 700,000 Rohingya escaped to Bangladesh in 2017, fleeing a brutal military-driven campaign of ethnic cleansing and years of intercommunal violence. In Cox’s Bazar, they joined hundreds of thousands who had already crossed the border. Today, approximately one million Rohingya live in Bangladesh’s cramped refugee camps and small villages, while another 400,000 have sought refuge in nearby Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, and India. 

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