REGIONAL OVERVIEW OF REFUGEE PROTECTION RESPONSES South and Southeast Asia are home to some of the world’s most protracted refugee situations, including two of the largest and most acute refugee crises in the world today, involving the Rohingya of Myanmar18 and the forced displacement of Afghans to countries across the region. The Rohingya have been called “the world’s most persecuted minority,” and have been subjected to pervasive human rights violations, including ethnic cleansing, statelessness, and genocide.19 As a result of the continuous discrimination and persecution experienced by this population over several decades, over 3.5 million Rohingya have fled Myanmar. Bangladesh hosts the majority of Rohingya refugees, with four major influxes occurring in 1977–78, 1992, 2016–17, and 2017. The Kutupalong-Balukhali Expansion Site near the town of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh (sometimes referred to as the “mega camp”) is now the world’s largest refugee camp.20 The largest Rohingya refugee community—911,000 people—is in Bangladesh.21 In addition to Bangladesh, Rohingya communities have sought refuge primarily in five other countries in South and Southeast Asia:22 India (over 40,000),23 Indonesia (nearly 2,000),24 Malaysia (over 88,000),25 Pakistan (over 300,000),26 and Thailand (over 4,000).27 Similarly, Afghan nationals have faced waves of conflict-driven forced displacement leading millions to seek protracted refuge in countries across the region, spanning the course of more than four decades.28 According to the most recently available statistics, 57 percent of all registered Afghan refugees and asylum seekers were being hosted in Pakistan (a total of 1.45 million people), with significant populations in neighboring Iran (780,000) as well as in more distant countries of transit and destination, such as Turkey (over 129,000) and India (approximately 15,000).29 The number of Afghan refugees being hosted by countries in the region will very likely swell as a result of the ongoing displacement caused by the August 2021 withdrawal of the U.S. military from Afghanistan and the country’s return to Taliban rule, making the need for the further advancement of rights-based refugee protection frameworks in the region ever more pressing. The following sections provide an abridged overview of the refugee populations and protection systems in place in South and Southeast Asia, in order to provide context for the more detailed discussion of individual positive practices in the remainder of this report. 10 UND OING PRECARIT Y: ELE VATING P OSITIVE PR ACTICES FOR REFU GEE PROTECTION IN SO U TH AND SO U THE AST ASIA