The Importance of Land Rights to Rohingya Repatriation: The Pinheiro Principles and Justice for the Displaced

More than 800,000 people left Rakhine in August 2017 without their homes or their livelihoods. The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission subsequently documented the widespread confiscation and destruction of Rohingya land, food, livestock and possessions, and in 2018 the confiscation of hundreds of acres of Rohingya farmland by the authorities.

No assurance about safety produces voluntary return if there is nothing left to return to. That is the premise, and the argument built on it targets the instrument rather than the atmosphere.

The Arrangement on Return of Displaced Persons from Rakhine State, signed by Bangladesh and Myanmar in 2017, records Myanmar’s commitment to encourage voluntary and safe return to original places of residence. On housing, land and property rights it makes only passing reference, and does very little if anything to remedy their continued denial. The promise and the mechanism do not meet.

Where the Arrangement supplies no framework, the piece argues, Myanmar’s remedial action should follow the 2005 United Nations Pinheiro Principles and the accompanying Inter-Agency Handbook, which adapt existing human rights and humanitarian obligations to the restitution of land and property specifically.