Third World Quarterly 2025, VOL. 46, NO. 9, 951–969 https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2025.2518595  Cascades of violence to genocide: sovereignty, nationalism and the predicament of the Rohingya of Myanmar Klejda Mulaj Department of Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology, University of Exeter, UK ABSTRACT The genocide against the Rohingya people of Myanmar is one of the greatest tragedies of our time. Although marginalisation, maltreatment and expulsion of this persecuted minority have been ongoing for more than six decades, their predicament attracts less and less attention in policy and academic circles as other humanitarian crises take precedence. In casting our gaze to the tragedy this contribution offers an interpretation of their human rights catastrophe as a function of (1) state policy grounded on negative expression of sovereignty, and (2) state-sponsored exclusivist nationalist ideology which has informed the nation-state building process and has cast the Rohingya as a threatening Other that ought to be extirpated. The analysis sheds light on sovereignty’s intimate connection with exclusion in an authoritarian setting that grounds a frame of life conducive to human victimisation of the targeted Other. In emphasising state-sponsored practices that have ensured the Rohingya exclusion in Myanmar, the analysis offers an optic for understanding, too, the social construction of their insecurity and neglect. The paper can be read as an appeal for acknowledging the Rohingya suffering and providing redress. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 13 July 2023 Accepted 8 June 2025 KEYWORDS Genocide state sovereignty nationalism the Rohingya of Myanmar Introduction Mass atrocity crimes – including genocide – afflict grievous harm to group and individual identities with severe, long-term repercussions for the people concerned. Although the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide demands action to prevent or stop genocide and alleviate human suffering (United Nations 1948), the record of both prevention and halting of genocidal violence is a dire one. Such is the case of the Rohingya people of Myanmar – formerly known as Burma – who, for decades, have been subjected to steady dehumanisation, marginalisation and expulsion from their homes by successive regimes intent on destroying this people as a group (United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) 2018; International Crisis Group (ICG) 2023). The Rohingya are an ethnic group whose ancestral land is Arakan (which for centuries was the independent kingdom of Arakan) in north-western Myanmar.1 Arakan or Rakhine – as CONTACT Klejda Mulaj K.Mulaj@exeter.ac.uk © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.