PREFACE In a world fraught with forced migrations and mass dislocations of population, citizenship has become a contested terrain. Hence the issue of legal protection for such population has become a frontline matter. It is in this context that compendiums such as this one become a vital contribution and guide to humanitarian actors, individual and institutional at both the state and societal level. This compendium, Beyond Refuge: Advancing Legal Protections for Rohingya Communities in Bangladesh, specifically focuses on Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh but as stated in the introduction, ‘the same arguments and suggested applications of law and policy can in some instances, be used to further the rights of other groups facing precarity and a denial of rights in Bangladesh’. Historically, Bangladesh has been both receiving and sending people across its borders since its very birth. During the very emergence of Bangladesh, an estimated 10 million people fled across the borders to take refuge in neighbouring countries in response to atrocities committed by the Pakistan Army and their collaborators. An estimated 20 million, constituting 40% of the population remained internally displaced. Such horrors of the war and the miseries experienced has remained embedded in its national memory and transmitted from one generation to another. Over the years it has endeared the Bangladesh people to receiving persecuted people fleeing from other countries in a similar manner such as the Rohingyas from Myanmar. But like other countries of South Asia, the Bangladesh state has not acceded to any of the Refugee Conventions nor enacted national legislations on asylum or refugee rights matters, the current status of Rohingya refugees is held in legal limbo, vulnerable to the swings of ad hoc policy decisions and the ambiguity of a non-cohesive legal framework that allows vested interests to dominate over principles of protection. This compendium, which offers a guideline for legal practitioners and rights defenders working in a humanitarian crisis 3 situation, is an attempt to meet this gap. The compendium also lays the ground for further legal advocacy that may be made to the Bangladesh state to push for a cohesive legal framework of refugee protection based on international humanitarian principles. But more importantly, phenomena such as climate change, environmental degradation, pandemics have changed our planet in a radical way. What we perceived as local humanitarian crises have assumed a systemic character. Endangerment of surroundings, habitat, cultivable land, livelihood and lifestyles are not limited to a particular group but a reality faced by everyone. COVID 19 has demonstrated that emergency responses to affected communities are harder to harness in a situation of nationwide lockdown compared to a localized area affected by natural disasters such as floods or cyclones. This has also had implications for the traditional parameters of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) strategies which the Bangladesh state has been renowned for. Beyond Refuge takes us from the plane of an emergency response to the more systemic response of legal protection in dealing with non-citizens. Given the ‘new normal’ realities of our times, it can very well be extended to the citizenry itself. Hence lessons can be derived from a refugee response and be translated to a national policy linking protection with citizenship. In a neo-liberal world where the rise of authoritarian regimes have striven to do just the opposite i.e. delink protection from the notion of citizenship, this would indeed create an exemplar for the future we need to uphold, nationally and globally. I thank those whose hard work has gone into producing this compendium, thereby helping us to take the first steps towards such new horizons. Meghna Guhathakurta Research Initiatives, Bangladesh BE YOND REFU GE: ADVANCING LEG AL PROTECTIONS FOR ROHINGYA C OMMUNITIES IN BANGL ADESH