The Rohingya Crisis



While everyone turned toward Syria to watch the unfolding refugee crises, a forgotten calamity continued to brew in Asia--the Rohingya refugee crises. While an important global problem, this topic has also consistently been used as debate topics. Please see below for bullets outlining the main issues of the crises, suggested additional material, and potential debate resolutions.

Background:
  • Since the 1970s, the government in Myanmar targeted the Rohingya Muslim minority. Many Rohingya have fled Myanmar into neighboring Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. 
  • The Rohingya are an ethnic minority in Myanmar and practice a Sufi variation of Sunni Islam. The majority of Rohingya live in the Rakhine State in Western Myanmar and differ from the Buddhist majority ethnically, linguistically, and religiously. 
  • Since independence in 1948, Myanmar has consistently denied the Rohingya ethnic status.
  • The Myanmar government refuses to grant the Rohingya populations citizenship, thus they lack legal documentation and are effectively stateless in the region. This also complicates their ability to seek refugee status elsewhere. 
  •  The government has effectively instituted discrimination and violent policies against the Rohingya, placing restrictions on marriage, family planning, employment, religion, and freedom of movement. 
  • In the towns of Maungdow and Buthidaung, Rohingya are only allowed to have two children.
  • Rakhine is the country's least developed state, which a poverty rate of 78 percent. They suffer widespread poverty, lack of education, and infrastructure. 
  • In 2017, following a violent attack by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, the government declared terrorist activity and unleashed a brutal assault on the region, burning down hundreds of villages. 
  • The U.N. Secretary-General has declared the actions in Myanmar as an ethnic cleaning and genocide. 
  • Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Myanmar's de facto leader, has denied ethnic cleaning is occuring. 

Motion: This House would create an independent Rohingya State. Click Here

Additional Resources:

Amnesty International Report
NY Times Interactive Map on Rohingya
CFR Background on Rohingya


Resolutions:

This House would Remove Aung San Suu Kyi's Nobel Peace Prize.

This House as the U.S. would intervene militarily in Myanmar.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why American Education Fails?

Despite previous initiatives to improve the American educational system, including No Child Left behind, Race to the Top, and Every Student Succeeds Act, the American education system is broken. Forbes proposes that the main reason for this degradation of the U.S. education system is because teachers are not treated like professionals. Background:  Many individuals would argue that there are certain characteristics that make good teachers --> a passion for their subject, deep knowledge on that subject, a willingness to listen to their students' needs, and a vision of what a properly education class will look like at the end of the academic year.  The largest problem with the American educational system is that it prioritizes standardized test scores above anything else. Test performance is tied to state funding and the evaluation of teachers and students.  While there is no empirical evidence to assert that standardized testing is the best indicator of knowledg...
Read more

The Basics of Queer Theory

What does it mean to be Queer? How should the LGBTQ community define themselves? All these questions answered and more! Queer theory’s origin is hard to clearly define, since it came from multiple critical and cultural contexts, including feminism, post-structuralist theory, radical movements of people of color, the gay and lesbian movements, AIDS activism, many sexual subcultural practices such as sadomasochism, and postcolonialism. Although queer theory had its beginnings in the educational sphere, the cultural events surrounding its origin also had a huge impact. Activist groups pushed back in the 1980's against the lack of government intervention after the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic. Gay activist groups like ACT-UP and Queer Nation took the lead to force attention to both the AIDS epidemic and the gay and lesbian community as a whole. These groups helped define the field with the work they did by highlighting a non-normative option to the more traditional identity politi...
Read more

Learning Speaker Positions with Ciera

Deputy Leader of Government in Opening Government: I think that hardest position to learn is Opening Government. The Deputy Leader plays an important role in the round. Your job is to help your partner prep the model and prep their points. You should prep PM's speech before you start preparing your own.  The DPM has four obligations in the round. First, defend and rebuild the case started by the PM.  Second, destroy the opposition case. Third, add new arguments to the round. Fourth, respond to the back half team.  First, the Deputy Prime Minister defends the case presented by the Prime Minister by engaging any refutation presented against the case by the Leader of the Opposition. The Deputy should take up the Prime Minister’s argument one by one and defend each argument against any refutation by the Leader of the Opposition. Thus, at the end of this section of the Deputy’s speech, the audience should see that the case originally presented by the Prime Minister still...
Read more