How Material Genocide Denial in the Aftermath of 2017 Perpetuated the Conditions for the Current Rohingya Genocide

The 2017 Rohingya genocide led to an unprecedented humanitarian response. In short order, camps with housing, food, water, and sanitation were established. Despite this multifaceted response, we argue that there was “material genocide denial,” that is an inadequate material response, especially in Myanmar, to the knowledge that a genocide occurred. Few efforts were made to memorialize what happened. Legal redress in international forums has been protracted. Most significantly, there was almost no intervention in the communities where the genocide took place with no peacebuilding efforts enacted in Rakhine State between the perpetrators and the Rohingya. With the focus on the refugee camps and not on the site of the genocide, the underlying precarity of the Rohingya in Rakhine was not addressed. Thus, the global community failed in its responsibility to prevent the current genocide from happening.