4 Lee-Winter & Kirabira consequences, particularly to their health and well-being.8 In addition, the Rohingyas’ vulnerability are intensi ed simply by being stateless Before delving into the gist of the dossier, it is important to draw a distinction between de jure and de facto statelessness. While de jure statelessness refers to the formal legal aspects of citizenship and rights e.g. issuance of birth certi cates, de facto statelessness relates to the more practical situations where refugees do not have any protections in the host states.9 This dossier thus presents an argument for the de jure recognition of refugee children under the host states’ laws, through the practice of birth registration Challenges associated with children’s statelessness and lack of legal status vary for each country, depending on the national laws. However, looking beyond the practical challenges, empirical research reveals profound connections between legal identity documentation, birth registration, and human rights protection.10 More speci cally, the negative impact stemming from the lack of birth registration and statelessness on the economic and social rights of children11 should not be understated—and such trends beg for more attention, whether scholarly or in-practice, especially in contemporary contexts like the Rohingya crisis Linked Vulnerabilitie Why the extra focus on the Rohingyas? The rst reason is an obvious one—the majority of refugees moving through the Southeast Asian (SEA) region are stateless Rohingyas.12 Emerging scholarship on Rohingya statelessness reveal challenges of legal identity in countries like India,13 and Rohingya refugees themselves are considered to be “the most marginalized and persecuted section of people in the world.”14 But what is more unsettling is their extreme vulnerability in the SEA region. Reports in past years reveal that a host of Rohingya refugees have become victims of human traf cking and smuggling into countries like Thailand and Malaysia.15 Being caught in a protracted con ict, the Rohingyas suffer serious limitations on their basic human rights, not only in their country of origin, but also along the way as they make their journey to relative safety. Living under such dire conditions, the Rohingya refugees become extremely vulnerable to exploitation by traf ckers.16 In the case of Rohingya children, the situation is much more dire as they become targets by child traf ckers for forced labor, prostitution, and slavery under the guise of “better opportunities” for work abroad. While some children were at rst thought to be kidnapped 8 UNHCR, Refugee Movements, 2. 9 Hugh Massey, Legal and Protection Policy Research Series: UNHCR and De Facto Statelessness (Geneva: Division of International Protection, UNHCR, April 2010), 3, accessed July 2, 2021, https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/protection/ globalconsult/4bc2ddeb9/16-unhcr-de-facto-statelessness-hugh-massey.html; Aaron Hale and Fredline M’Cormack-Hale, “Statelessness, Nationality, and Citizenship in Sierra Leone,” Journal of Global South Studies 35, no. 2 (2018), 311. 10 Caroline Vandenabeele, “To Register or Not to Register?: Legal Identity, Birth Registration, and Inclusive Development,” in Children Without a State: A Global Human Rights Challenge, ed. Jacqueline Bhabha (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2011), 307–330. 11 Jacqueline Bhabha, “From Citizen to Migrant: The Scope of Child Statelessness in the Twenty-First Century,” in Children Without a State: A Global Human Rights Challenge, ed. Jacqueline Bhabha (Cambridge: The MIT Press Cambridge, 2011), 1–42. 12 UNHCR, Refugee Movements. 13 Tejal Khanna, “Rohingyas and the (Il)Legal Quest for an Indian Identity,” Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2, no. 2 (2020), 342, accessed October 8, 2021, https://statelessnessandcitizenshipreview.com/index.php/journal/article/ view/221/109. 14 Kudrat-E-Khuda (Babu), “The Impacts and Challenges to Host Country Bangladesh Due to Sheltering the Rohingya Refugees,” Cogent Social Sciences 6, no. 1 (2020), 2. 15 Ranyta Yusran, “The ASEAN Convention Against Traf cking in Persons: A Preliminary Assessment,” Asian Journal of International Law 8, no. 1 (2018), 258. 16 The ASEAN Post Team, “ASEAN’s Human Traf cking Woes,” The ASEAN Post, May 11, 2020, accessed August 20, 2021, https://theaseanpost.com/article/aseans-human-traf cking-woes. . fi fi . fi fi fi fi fl . fi fi Genocide Studies and Prevention 15, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.15.2.1863. fi fi s fi © 2021