Abstract
The Rohingya people of Myanmar represent the most extensively documented case of
constructed statelessness in the contemporary world — the deliberate engineering of legal nonpersonhood as an instrument of ethnic persecution. Stripped of citizenship under the 1982
Citizenship Law and subjected to genocide in 2017, nearly one million Rohingya now live in
the refugee camps of Cox's Bazar, stateless in displacement as they were stateless in their
homeland. This paper argues that Rohingya statelessness is not a technical legal classification
but a systematically designed architecture of exclusion that forecloses every dimension of selfdetermination: political participation, economic agency, cultural expression, and the
foundational right to recognition as a people.
Drawing on an original empirical evidence base — oral history testimonies from the Roots of
Arakan archive (N=50+), program impact data from the Rohingya Youth Union (RYU),
comparative statistical analysis of global stateless populations, and humanitarian data from
UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, and GAGE Bangladesh — this paper makes three analytical
contributions. First, it introduces the Self-Determination Continuum framework, assessing
Rohingya rights status across eight dimensions with original visualizations. Second, it
documents how refugee-led community institutions are constructing alternative forms of
governance and data sovereignty in the absence of state recognition. Third, it presents eight
original data visualizations, nine analytical data tables, and four evidence-based policy
recommendations to advance Rohingya self-determination.
Keywords: Statelessness - Constructive Statelessness - Self-Determination - Rohingya - Refugee-Led
Governance - Oral History - Indigenous Data Sovereignty - Structural Violence - Transitional Justice Myanmar
JEL Classification: K33 - K38 - O15 - P48
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