The US declared violence against the Rohingya was genocide. What's next?

Last week, the United States announced that it had determined that the Myanmar military committed a genocide against the Rohingya. It was a decision that came more than four years after more than 730,000 Rohingya from Myanmar were forced to flee and about three years since a State Department-commissioned investigation by the Public International Law and Policy Group concluded that “there were reasonable grounds to believe” a genocide had been committed.

The decision was welcomed by many Rohingya, Myanmar people, and human rights experts, but they say they now expect the U.S. to take action based on that decision.

“Determining genocide is not enough if no action is followed by it,” said Kyaw Win, executive director of the Burma Human Rights Network, based in London. 

Maung Zarni, a Myanmar genocide scholar and human rights activist, said the determination came years too late and that he was disappointed it hadn’t been accompanied by significant action, such as sending Myanmar’s ambassador to the U.S. home.

“What matters is if the U.S. has the political will to follow through its rhetoric of accountability,” Zarni said, adding that he doesn’t want “the determination to be another piece of false hope.”

It’s unclear whether the U.S. would consider such an action, though it has been outspoken about its opposition to the military coup that occurred last year. While the U.S. is one of the largest donors to the Rohingya humanitarian crisis, has issued economic sanctions against military officials and has a geostrategic interest in the country, it’s unclear at this point how much farther it might go to support the opposition and pressure the military, despite the various requests from activists and experts.

The announcement

Last week, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the determination, he said the U.S. would provide nearly $1 million to the U.N. Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar to support its efforts to collect, preserve, and analyze evidence of “the most serious international crimes” in Myanmar.

He also said the U.S. has shared information with Gambia related to the case it filed against Myanmar under the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice. Further, the U.S. has imposed sanctions on 65 individuals and 26 entities tied to the military, had supported a U.N. General Assembly resolution to stop the flow of arms into Burma, and has contributed nearly $1.6 billion in humanitarian aid to the Rohingya since 2017.

On Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department also issued 10 additional sanctions against Burmese military leaders, their associates, and related businesses — effectively freezing their assets in the U.S.

The United Kingdom and Canada also put in place similar sanctions on Friday, according to a statement from Blinken, in which he said that the U.S. “will continue to impose costs on the military regime and those who support it until it ceases the violence and restores Burma’s path to democracy.”

But experts told Devex that now is the time to build on the determination to put further pressure on the Myanmar military and provide support to the National Unity Government.

Blinken’s determination had the Myanmar military “panicking” and making some structural changes and arrests of its own people, Win said.

“If the U.S. is not doing anything, they will see that as a symbolic action, not meaningful,” Win said. There must be consequences for the military and “the 600,000 Rohingya remaining in Myanmar must be protected,” he said.

“The U.S. declared that the leadership of the state of [Myanmar] is a bunch of international criminals. Once you say you are all criminals the next step is to get them arrested or out of your backyard,” Zarni said.

But he and some others are skeptical that the U.S. will take decisive action, especially with so much attention focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Win said that action in Myanmar should be a key part of the U.S. strategy to counter Russia, which has been a major arms supplier to the Myanmar military. If Myanmar fails in its democratic struggle, it will “injure the whole region” and diminish U.S. influence, Win said.

Possible actions

The actions that advocacy groups call for vary — some focus on accountability and supporting the legal cases, and others are more focused on supporting the NUG and opposition.

When it comes to accountability, advocates would like the U.S. to join Gambia’s case against Myanmar in the ICJ and would like to see the U.S. lead a U.N. Security Council resolution referring the Burmese criminal case to the ICC and putting in place an arms embargo for the military.

The U.S. is sharing information with Gambia, and Blinken has expressed a U.S. intention to hold the military accountable. The U.S. helped pass a General Assembly resolution related to arms sales to the Myanmar military and reiterated the call for countries to stop providing arms last week, but it is unclear if it would lead to a Security Council resolution related to the ICC.

While Russia and China likely would veto a Security Council resolution, it could activate a process to transfer the issue to the General Assembly. That process has not been invoked often, but it was used following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, said Matthew Smith, CEO at Fortify Rights.

The U.S. should recognize and support the NUG government and in doing so put pressure on them to implement a policy that includes Rohingya and other ethnic minorities in the government, several of the experts and activists said.

If the U.S. recognizes the NUG, it is likely that other governments will follow suit, Smith said, adding that it would have important ripple effects especially if the NUG has the resources it needs.

In October, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan did meet virtually with members of the NUG where they discussed U.S. support for the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar and for regional efforts to hold the military accountable.

The U.S. should recognize the NUG as the government and give them access to the roughly $1 billion in sovereign funds that the U.S. froze following the military coup “to support the activities to bring down the [Myanmar] military,” Zarni said.

Win took it a step farther, calling for the U.S. to support the Rohingya to defend itself, including by providing arms, though there has been no indication that the U.S. would consider this.

He acknowledged that some would argue that arming the Rohingya could bring chaos but he said the country is already in chaos and “there isn't a peaceful solution right now anymore, so we need to be realistic.”

The U.S. can also lead efforts to apply greater economic pressure on the military junta including by sanctioning Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, the national oil and gas company. Natural gas is the single largest source of revenue and preventing those proceeds from getting to the military junta will “change dynamics in Myanmar in important ways” and may force the military to rethink its strategy of murdering and imprisoning civilians, Smith said.

The U.S. should also put pressure on allies in the region, including Thailand and Singapore, which continue to do business with the military-controlled economy. If they are pushed to cut economic ties, it will limit the military’s assets, the experts said.

U.S. officials have pushed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries to increase pressure on the Myanmar military since the coup. And the 2022 U.S. National Defense Authorization Act, called for President Joe Biden to develop a Myanmar strategy that supports organizations that represent the democratic aspirations of the Myanmar people, impose costs on the military junta, and “counter corrosive malign influence of the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation in [Myanmar].”