Cascades of violence to genocide: sovereignty, nationalism and the predicament of the Rohingya of Myanmar

Klejda Mulaj

Third World Quarterly, 2025, vol. 46, issue 9, 951-969

Abstract: The genocide against the Rohingya people of Myanmar is one of the greatest tragedies of our time. Although marginalisation, maltreatment and expulsion of this persecuted minority have been ongoing for more than six decades, their predicament attracts less and less attention in policy and academic circles as other humanitarian crises take precedence. In casting our gaze to the tragedy this contribution offers an interpretation of their human rights catastrophe as a function of (1) state policy grounded on negative expression of sovereignty, and (2) state-sponsored exclusivist nationalist ideology which has informed the nation-state building process and has cast the Rohingya as a threatening Other that ought to be extirpated. The analysis sheds light on sovereignty’s intimate connection with exclusion in an authoritarian setting that grounds a frame of life conducive to human victimisation of the targeted Other. In emphasising state-sponsored practices that have ensured the Rohingya exclusion in Myanmar, the analysis offers an optic for understanding, too, the social construction of their insecurity and neglect. The paper can be read as an appeal for acknowledging the Rohingya suffering and providing redress.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2025.2518595

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