Beyond State Lines: Mapping Justice for the Rohingya

Abstract

This paper examines the Rohingya crisis as more than a humanitarian emergency, arguing that it exposes a deeper flaw in how justice and human rights are structured in the modern international system. At its core, the project asks: why has the Rohingya crisis continued despite years of global attention and intervention? What happens when the state, rather than protecting rights, is the one violating them? What would it look like to think about justice and rights outside of state membership, especially for people who are stateless?

To answer these questions, the paper takes a political theory approach, drawing primarily on Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “right to have rights” and Nancy Fraser’s framework of distribution, recognition, and representation. Using this framework, it analyzes both the historical conditions that produced Rohingya statelessness and the international community’s response at the national, regional, and global levels.

The paper argues that the persistence of the crisis is not simply a failure of intervention, but a structural problem. Existing responses, such as humanitarian aid, legal accountability through international courts, and diplomatic pressure, focus largely on distribution and recognition. While these efforts are important, they remain limited because they operate within a system that ties rights to state membership. As a result, the Rohingya are assisted, named, and even defended, but not meaningfully included.

By reframing the crisis through Fraser’s concept of representation, the paper shows that the central injustice is political exclusion. The Rohingya are not only denied resources and recognition, but are excluded from the very structures that determine who counts as a subject of justice in the first place. This lack of representation helps explain both the endurance of the crisis and the limitations of current solutions.

In response, the paper calls for a reimagining of justice beyond the Westphalian state. It suggests that meaningful protection of human rights requires new forms of political membership and representation that are not dependent on nationality. Ultimately, the Rohingya case reveals that without rethinking who has the right to have rights, efforts to address statelessness will remain incomplete.