The Politics of Forced Reproduction: Genocide Denial and the Legal Invisibility of Rohingya Children

This chapter critically examines the genocidal campaign perpetrated by the Myanmar armed forces, highlighting the systematic use of sexual violence and coerced reproduction against Rohingya women, and the resultant profound social, legal, and psychological harm inflicted upon both survivors and the children born of rape. It interrogates the politics of genocide denial to expose the Myanmar state’s deliberate concealment of reproductive violence, alongside the concomitant statelessness and social death experienced by affected children. Situated within the frameworks of intersectionality, social death, and postcolonial feminist theory, the study draws upon secondary literature to argue that sexual violence functions as a calculated instrument aimed at the annihilation of Rohingya identity. The chapter contends that international legal frameworks must formally recognise reproductive violence as a constitutive element of genocide and that protective mechanisms for stateless children require significant reinforcement, thereby centring the experiences of Rohingya women within legal scholarship and broader academic discourse.