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   Myanmar’s Rohingya Refugees Are The World’s Largest Group of Stateless
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   May 11, 2015, at 2:37 PM

Myanmar’s Rohingya Refugees Are The World’s Largest Group of Stateless People

   By Leah Libresco

   Filed under Migration
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   Hundreds of Rohingya wash up on Indonesian coast
   More than 500 Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar and Bangladesh took shelter
   in Seunuddon after coming ashore on Sumatra island in Indonesia on
   Monday.

   Junaidi Hanafiah / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

   More than 1,500 Rohingya Muslim and Bangladeshi refugees have landed in
   Indonesia and Malaysia since Sunday. Seven thousand more are estimated
   to still be on the oceans, fleeing Myanmar. If these groups of refugees
   are turned back, it’s not clear where the Rohingya will be sent,
   because they are considered stateless. In fact, they are the largest
   group of stateless people in the world.

   Rohingya residents of Myanmar are not citizens of their own nation. In
   1982, Myanmar’s citizenship law classified all Rohingya as immigrants
   from Bangladesh, regardless of where they were born or how long their
   families had lived in Myanmar. The Muslim Rohingya are an ethnic
   minority in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. During territorial
   disputes, the Rohingya have favored autonomy for themselves or, in the
   1940s, absorption into the former East Pakistan.

   The United Nations estimates that Myanmar has relegated over a million
   Rohingya to the status of stateless people — they constitute 10 percent
   of all stateless people in the world.

   Over 800,000 stateless Rohingya still live in Myanmar, and 100,000 of
   them have been confined to restrictive and dangerous camps. Myanmar
   has expelled Doctors Without Borders from regions populated by
   Rohingya, depriving residents of medical care and of foreign witnesses
   to attacks and massacres.
          COUNTRY       STATELESS POPULATION
   1 Myanmar            810k
   2 Côte d’Ivoire      700
   3 Thailand           506
   4 Latvia             267
   5 Dominican Republic 210

   In December 2014, the United Nations General Assembly passed a
   resolution urging Myanmar to grant citizenship to its Rohingya
   residents, but Myanmar has refused to relent.

   The Rohingya have little to lose by fleeing a country that disavows
   them. It’s difficult to imagine that this week’s attempted exodus will
   be the last.

   Correction: An earlier version of this article gave the wrong date for
   the passage of the UN resolution on Rohingya citizenship. It was
   December 2014.

   Leah Libresco is a former news writer for FiveThirtyEight.
   @leahlibresco

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