Articles : “What Kind of Court Is This?”: Perceptions of International Justice Among Rohingya Refugees

“What Kind of Court Is This?”: Perceptions of International Justice Among Rohingya Refugees

The article titled “What kind of court is this?: Perceptions of International Justice Among Rohingya Refugees” was recently published in the prestigious Human Rights Quarterly journal (Vol. 46, No. 2). This article, based on a community-participatory research project, “Perceptions of Justice” by LAW, seeks to understand what “justice” means for Rohingya people. It provides a detailed insight into the community’s expectations, as well as its perceived level of understanding and level of inclusion within the ongoing justice processes. 

In the aftermath of mass atrocities, institutions like the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice play a pivotal role in providing justice and accountability for survivors of grave human rights violations and serious international crimes. However, despite progress in giving victims a voice in these courts, achieving victim-centred justice remains a challenge. Their voices are often missing when assessing the impact of such institutions on the ground.  Amidst this challenge, this article reflects on the enormous gap between the survivors’ expectations of the justice mechanisms and the expected outcomes.  

In late 2022, LAW’s Rohingya crisis team implemented a survey through semi-structured focused-group discussions and key-informant interviews with 444 Rohingya survivors of the 2017 “clearance operation” who had fled Myanmar to refugee camps in Bangladesh. The research was implemented on the ground by a team of 32 Rohingya enumerators, transcribers, archivists, and audio recorders. 

The article analyses the surveys within the broader context of the Rohingya people’s lives, considering their past experiences of persecution in Myanmar, their cultural beliefs and practices related to communal justice, and their present situation of enduring displacement in refugee camps in Bangladesh.  

For the majority of the participants, justice is viewed as fixing the root cause of their problem – i.e., not merely bringing the perpetrators to trial, but instead being conferred citizenship, compensation, and protection. The vision of justice expressed in the survey data goes not only beyond retributive and/or expressive notions of justice, but also beyond restorative justice. Rohingya seek not only “safe, dignified, and voluntary” return to their homeland – the oft-used phrase to depict the solution of the Rohingya crisis – but also to obtain the citizenship and belonging that would in turn grant them the full bundle of rights that they have been deprived of for over half a century.  For most, returning to their homeland without citizenship is “unthinkable”. In sum, the Rohingya are seeking transformative and comprehensive justice, which is not something that the ongoing international justice processes offer. 

The article concludes by discussing how the survey’s findings can influence the future involvement of the Rohingya in international justice processes and a wider reflection on how grassroots perspectives can and should shape the global justice discourse. Our research seeks to amplify the voices of survivors and ensure that their perspectives are not overlooked in the pursuit of justice. 

LAW remains committed to utilising the findings of this research to inform our advocacy efforts and engagement with international justice mechanisms to move from a largely punitive justice discourse to a transformative justice for the Rohingya survivors who have faced and continue to experience a deep physical, psychological and social impact  because of the international crimes committed against them.  

For further details and to access the article, visit HRQ’s website here. 

We extend our gratitude to all those involved in making this research, the article and publication possible, especially the Rohingya victims and survivors living in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, who participated in the survey. We encourage readers to explore the article for a deeper understanding of justice from the perspective of Rohingya survivors.

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Authors: 

Payam Akhavan LLM SJD (Harvard) OOnt FRSC is Professor of International Law, Chair in Human Rights, and Senior Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto; Special Advisor on Genocide to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court; and served as Counsel and Advocate for The Gambia in the Application of Genocide Convention Case against Myanmar before the ICJ. He is a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and an Associate Member of the Institut de droit international. He previously served as the first Legal Advisor to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague (1994-2000).  

Rebecca J. Hamilton is Professor of Law at American University, Washington College of Law, an Executive Editor at Just Security, a 2024 Fulbright Scholar, and former International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. An expert on atrocity prevention, she is the author of Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide. She previously worked in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and she served as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post in Sudan.  

Antonia Mulvey is an international human rights lawyer with over twenty-five years of experience; Founder and Executive Director of Legal Action Worldwide (LAW); former UN investigator specializing in sexual and gender-based violence and violations against children for the UN FFM; Fellow at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics; and a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University Law School, New York. In addition to her work with LAW, Antonia holds various academic positions and engagements. 

Acknowledgement: 

The authors express their heartfelt gratitude to the Rohingya victims and survivors living in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, who participated in the survey referenced in this article. This survey’s implementation and data analysis were conducted by Daniel Coyle, Abdullah Jainul, and a team of thirty-two Rohingya researchers (kept anonymous for safety and security reasons). The authors gratefully acknowledge the research assistance of Ishita Kumar (BA, LLB, LLM) and Yuvraj Rathore (BA, LLB), both working at LAW’s Rohingya Crisis Programme based in Cox’s Bazar, for their contributions to the analysis and interpretation of data in the article, providing valuable edits, and coordinating the implementation of the survey during 2022-23.  

The authors would also like to thank other members of LAW’s team, namely, Jack Torbet, Marissa Kardon Weber, and Taro Tanaka, who assisted in conceptualization, literature review, editing, and proofreading. The authors are grateful to the University of Toronto’s International Human Rights Program clinic team consisting of Ashley Major, Alex Foulger-Fort, Sean Santen, Taskeen Nawab, and Maggie Arai for their report on Victim and Survivor Participation in International Justice Proceedings, which served as relevant background information during the preparation of this article, and to Jennifer Dowdy at American University, Washington College of Law, for stellar research support.  

This article was published with the funding support of the European Union and Switzerland. The contents, views, and opinions expressed in this article are solely of the authors and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union or Switzerland. 

Read the full report here.