The gaze ought to be on Myanmar centring the Rohingya crisis with focus on five areas including greater political engagement to globally track down perpetrators of the genocide, said Professor Imtiaz Ahmed on Tuesday, 27 August 2019.
On the economic front, investors engaging with Myanmar should be internationally flagged while cultural effort should focus on engaging Myanmar’s singers, poets and civil society members to speak up for the community, he said.
Technology should be used to convey in Burmese and Rohingya languages efforts undertaken for the community while geopolitically China, Japan and India, Myanmar’s important allies, should be deeply engaged for a sustainable solution, he added.
Professor Ahmed, director of the Centre for Genocide Studies at the University of Dhaka, was addressing an event titled “The Rohingya Refugee Crisis: Towards Sustainable Solutions -- A Book Launch and Policy Colloquium” in the capital’s BRAC Centre Inn.
The programme was jointly organised by ActionAid Bangladesh, the Centre for Peace and Justice (CPJ) of Brac University and the Centre for Genocide Studies.
The book is a compilation of the papers presented at an international conference titled “The Rohingya Refugee Crisis: Towards Sustainable Solutions” convened by the three in Dhaka in April last year.
Professor Ahmed said to show that it was serious in repatriating the community, Myanmar should amend existing laws regarding Rohingya rights and create a safe zone in Rakhine deploying of security personnel provided by the international community.
The world will remember Bangladesh’s role in tackling the crisis while the international community should speak up, react and respond to share its burden, said UN Resident Coordinator in Bangladesh Mia Seppo.
Canadian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Benoit Prefontaine said his country was working to build international consensus.
CPJ Executive Director Manzoor Hasan OBE, NGO Affairs Bureau Director General KM Abdus Salam, Secretary-Bilateral (Asia & Pacific) to Bangladesh Foreign Ministry Mahbub Uz Zaman, Justice Dr Syed Refaat Ahmed of the Supreme Court and ActionAid Bangladesh Country Director Farah Kabir also spoke at the event.