The Grimshaw Review of International Affairs Vol. 2, No. 1 “foreign and security threat” to Myanmar’s identity. Islamophobia’s supplanting of colonial-era racialised narratives turned the systemic erasure of a vulnerable population into an emotive, not merely administrative, process (Ansar, 2020). The Rohingya’s persecution has been accentuated by cycles of state-sponsored violence that reflect both opportunistic repression and deliberate state strategy. In 1978, Operation Nagamin marked one of the first large-scale campaigns to expel “illegal immigrants,” displacing tens of thousands of Rohingya to neighbouring Bangladesh. Subsequent events, such as the 2012 Rakhine riots, saw escalating communal violence evolve into systemic campaigns of ethnic cleansing, as documented by Human Rights Watch (Ansar, 2020). The crisis reached unprecedented levels in 2017, when attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) provoked a disproportionate military response characterised by mass killings, sexual violence, and village burnings (Amnesty International, 2018). These atrocities forced over 742,000 Rohingya – half of whom were children – to flee to Bangladesh, swelling the refugee population to nearly one million and creating the world’s largest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar (UN Refugees, 2024; Bowden, 2019). Indeed, this exodus is the culmination of decades of unaddressed structural violence, laying bare the international community’s failure to meaningfully intervene. The human consequences of this protracted crisis are profound. In Cox’s Bazar, refugees face dire conditions, with 95% reliant on international aid for survival, and children suffering from malnutrition and limited access to education (UN Refugees, 2024). Natural disasters, including monsoon-triggered landslides, compound these challenges, further exacerbating already precarious living conditions (Ahmed et al., 2018). Within Myanmar, over 630,000 Rohingya remain stateless, and the broader conflict has displaced 3.4 million people (UNHCR, 2024). Women and children shoulder the burden of these crises as they face heightened risks of exploitation and gender-based violence (UN Refugees, 2024). These issues, coupled with the rising trend of Rohingya undertaking perilous sea journeys from 6