As President, Joe Biden and his team will face the ongoing repercussions of one of the worst mass atrocities in recent history, the genocide committed by the state of Myanmar against the Rohingya people. As nearly 1 million Rohingya remain displaced in camps in Bangladesh and 600,000 more face the threat of further atrocities inside Myanmar, the Biden administration has an opportunity to change the trajectory of the crisis and hold the perpetrators of these grave crimes accountable.

Refugees International believes the State of Myanmar has committed genocide against the Rohingya people, and as the threat of genocide continues, the world must take action.

The world’s more than 70 million forcibly displaced people—including refugees, asylum seekers, IDPs, and other forced migrants—are among the most vulnerable to the novel coronavirus.

Well into the third year since their mass expulsion from Myanmar, notably absent from accountability and humanitarian efforts is the voice of the Rohingya refugees themselves. Daniel P. Sullivan investigates how Rohingya are not meaningfully engaged and informed about decisions that affect them and proposes a path forward.

A year after South Sudan signed a peace agreement to end the country’s devastating civil war, a staggering one-third of its population is still displaced. Little of the peace agreement has been implemented, and failure to address key issues, including relocation and disarmament of soldiers and disenfranchisement of ethnic minorities, could revive the devastating violence seen in recent years. As peace hangs in the balance, South Sudan’s displaced people fear returning home.

Based on first-hand witness accounts from Rohingya who had arrived in Bangladesh from Myanmar just days before, a new Refugees International report details ongoing harassment, arbitrary detention, and forced labor for Rohingya who remain in Myanmar.

A fragile new peace deal in South Sudan has brought cautious hope to the country’s 4.5 million displaced, and talks of returning forcibly displaced populations from inside and outside the country have gained momentum. But Dan Sullivan warns that large-scale returns are premature.

One year after the brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Myanmar military that forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh, Refugees International outlines five key priorities the world must address in order to begin tackling the root causes of the Rohingya crisis.

This report warns that a humanitarian catastrophe is imminently threatening the lives of nearly one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh as they now face the onset of the monsoon and cyclone seasons. The humanitarian response, including preparation for the monsoon season, has been significant and substantial – but it has also been hamstrung by obstacles and lack of effective management and coordination by the Government of Bangladesh and the United Nations system. Failure to overcome these challenges is unnecessarily putting lives at risk.

This Refugees International report details how Myanmar’s military - the same military responsible for ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar - is also responsible for severe human rights abuses and blocking of life-saving aid to a mostly Christian minority in the north of the country.  A team from Refugees International was able to access a restricted area outside of government control in Myanmar’s Kachin State to document the conditions of displaced persons.

Following the violent expulsion of some 400,000 Rohingya in Myanmar in the course of three weeks (now more than 500,000), Refugees International (RI) President Eric Schwartz and Senior Advocate for Human Rights Daniel Sullivan traveled to Bangladesh to assess the situation and bear witness. This policy brief is based on that mission, which involved interviews with Rohingya refugees who recently arrived from Myanmar as well as with United Nations and Bangladesh government officials and international aid workers in Bangladesh. 

It has been nine months since the first of more than 74,000 ethnic minority Rohingya streamed into Bangladesh seeking refuge from abuses in Myanmar. The influx of refugees, and the harrowing stories they carried, brought needed international attention to the abuses taking place in Myanmar.

A year and a half ago, thousands of desperate Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants and asylum-seekers were abandoned at sea, shocking and horrifying many around the world. But more than a year later, little has changed. Governments and international agencies have fulfilled few promises to better protect Rohingya who, facing persecution in Myanmar, have seen flight as their only survival option. 

Ethnic minority groups in Myanmar know all too well that the military is capable of — and willing to execute — mass atrocities. The US and all states that stand for democracy, and against mass atrocities, must act now while the eyes of the world are on Myanmar.

Refugees International and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide offer takeaways on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting atrocity prevention in Cameroon and South Sudan.

Calling what happened to the Rohingya “genocide” is not simply a matter of semantics. A formal designation would help accomplish a series of goals.

The Rohingya are crammed into the largest refugee settlement in the world. In such conditions, a virus like COVID-19 could spread like wildfire

This International Women’s Day, Refugees International is celebrating the strength and leadership of women on the frontlines of displaced communities. Despite the heightened challenges they face on the move, displaced women around the globe are rising up to work toward a better future.

At The Hague on December 11, 2019, Aung San Suu Kyi took the stage to defend Myanmar against the ICJ’s charges of genocide. Beyond the media storm that Suu Kyi’s defense of the indefensible has unleashed, Daniel Sullivan argues that the ICJ probe has the potential to ratchet up international pressure on Myanmar and to prevent atrocities as the risk of genocide persists.

The clock is ticking on a November 12 deadline to form a transitional government in South Sudan. Failure to do so might fatally undermine an already fragile peace.

The common barriers to return in the cases of Rohingya refugees and South Sudanese IDPs prompt serious questions about how to ensure the safety and voluntariness of returns.

The conflict in South Sudan has displaced more than 4 million people, a third of the country’s pre-war population, since it started in December 2013. Despite the signing of a peace agreement in September 2018, its lack of implementation has left those displaced wary of returning.  

PBS NewsHours’ Amna Nawaz talks to Refugees International's Dan Sullivan about the hostile conditions in Myanmar preventing Rohingya from returning home.

Rohingya refugees continue to arrive in Bangladesh with stories of oppression at the hands of Myanmar’s security forces. Mark Yarnell and Daniel Sullivan report in the Diplomat on what they heard from newly displaced Rohingya during a recent Refugees International research mission to Bangladesh.

The Rohingya Women’s Empowerment and Advocacy Network has organized some 400 Rohingya women in Bangladesh into a network of volunteers working to promote the voices of women. Dan Sullivan profiles the network’s leader Chekufa.

What will the year 2019 have in store for the Rohingya? Read Daniel Sullivan’s latest op-ed for key developments to keep an eye on and some thoughts on what must be done to improve the outlook.

Regina Emilio was forced to flee her home after civil war broke out in South Sudan in December 2013. She is one of some 200,000 people living in UN-controlled Protection of Civilian (PoC) sites across the country. As a recent peace agreement muddles forward, some are talking of closing the PoC sites. But for Regina and others, the sites remain essential as conditions at home are still unsafe. 

On August 27, the UN-mandated Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar released a devastating report concluding that the country’s military leaders should be prosecuted for the “gravest crimes under international law, against the Rohingya minority. While this aspect of the report has garnered the greatest attention, other important findings including that the crimes of the Myanmar military go far beyond those committed against the Rohingya, and that the burden of responsibility for those crimes extends beyond the military have gone largely unnoticed.

As United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres visits Rohingya camps in Bangladesh on July 2, he must address the restrictive policies and lack of effective management and coordination that are hindering humanitarian support efforts there.

During a recent mission to the camps in Bangladesh which now houses tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees, Daniel Sullivan and Francisca Vigaud-Walsh interviewed Mayyu Ali, a young Rohingya man who described the crimes against the Rohingya people in Myanmar. Mayyu called on the international community to take concrete action to end the violence.

The Security Council delegation's visit to the destroyed Rohingya villages in Myanmar should be an important first critical step toward accountability for the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, and an important step toward the type of conditions conducive to the voluntary return of Rohingya in safety and dignity to Myanmar. Now the UN and international community must deliver.

While brutal attacks against the Rohingya Muslims continue, the minority ethnic Kachin people in northern Myanmar also live under severe human rights abuses at the hands of Myanmar's government and military. One displaced woman, Aye Hkine, sends a simple message on Human Rights Day.

In this webinar, Refugees International Senior Advocate for Human Rights, Dan Sullivan provides a first-hand account of his experience in Bangladesh and discuss the objectives of his new report, Reluctant Refuge: Rohingya Safe but not Secure in Bangladesh. 

On Dec. 4, 2000, the United Nations General Assembly declared that June 20 would be "celebrated" annually as World Refugee Day. For millions of people displaced by conflict and persecution globally, there is little to celebrate, but World Refugee Day does present an opportunity to bring attention to their plight, and to the possibility of solutions.

On February 3, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report citing systematic violence by Myanmar security forces against the Rohingya Muslim minority population. The report concludes that the systematic nature of the abuses by the government security forces “very likely amount to commission of crimes against humanity”.

In December 2016 Refugees International (RI) carried out a mission to Turkey, visiting refugees and asylum-seekers in several cities including Istanbul, Denizli, Konya, Aksaray, and Kayseri. Pictured here is a family of Afghan refugees living in Denizli.

Refugees International (RI) was just on the ground in Malaysia exploring conditions for several Rohingya communities who are among the tens of thousands who have fled persecution in Myanmar in recent years. Their journeys were often more horrific than the conditions from which they fled and their lives in Malaysia are only better in relative terms. The truth of this reality is starkly illuminated in the story of two sisters, Amina and Khadija.*

As President Obama welcomes Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, to the United States this week and celebrates her country’s democratic reforms, Refugees International will be traveling to Southeast Asia to meet with a population that is not welcome in her country: the Rohingya.