Joint Statement: Malaysia must uphold international law and protect Rohingya from detention and returns to Myanmar 31 July 2026 In recent weeks, the government has suspended UNHCR refugee registration, detained 110 Rohingya refugees following forced evictions from their homes, called for a review of UNHCR's presence in Malaysia1, and announced plans to pursue the return of 5,000 Rohingya refugees from Malaysia and 300,000 Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh through discussions with Myanmar’s military junta, despite the continuing genocide against the Rohingya and despite the fact that the military authorities have neither restored Rohingya citizenship nor provided credible guarantees of safety, freedom of movement, or protection upon return. This is also despite the fact that Myanmar’s current leader is the subject of an arrest warrant application before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity committed against the Rohingya. At the same time, Rohingya communities have not been meaningfully consulted and face an unprecedented surge in online hate speech, harassment, threats, abuse, forced evictions, school closures, and arbitrary detention. Malaysia has rightly positioned itself as one of the world’s most vocal state defenders of Palestinian rights, explicitly grounding its advocacy in international law. This demonstrates that Malaysia is fluent in the language of international law, non-refoulement, and the rights of the displaced people. That same fluency has been largely absent from its domestic approach to the Rohingya. The principles Malaysia invokes abroad must be applied consistently at home; international law cannot be championed in one context while disregarded in another. We, the undersigned international and regional organisations, working on nationality rights and the protection of stateless people, express our profound concern at these developments. We call on the Government of Malaysia, UNHCR, ASEAN, and the wider international community to act urgently to protect the rights, dignity and safety of the Rohingya people. Statelessness, discrimination, and genocide: the root cause of the Rohingya crisis remain unresolved, any returns to Myanmar violates international law. We are deeply concerned over the government’s announcement to return 5,000 Rohingyas to Myanmar. The persecution of the Rohingya began with the deliberate denial of nationality. Myanmar's 1982 Citizenship Law systematically excluded the Rohingya from citizenship, rendering an entire people stateless by design. Denied nationality, they were deprived of legal protection, education, healthcare, political participation and employment. This systematic exclusion culminated in genocide, crimes against humanity, and the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into neighbouring countries. Statelessness left them vulnerable to arbitrary detention, exploitation, exclusion from formal refugee status, and susceptible to hate campaigns painting people as ‘illegitimate’ or ‘removable’. Today, the root causes of this persecution remain unchanged. The military junta continues to wage widespread violence against civilians while the discriminatory legal framework denying Malaysia’s foreign minister says the country should reconsider whether to allow the United Nations refugee agency to operate unless it imposes stricter controls on issuing refugee documents. Al Jazeera, Malaysian foreign minister calls for review of UNHCR’s presence, 28 July 2026. 1