HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY: THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF INDONESIA TO SOLVE HUMANITARIAN ISSUES IN THE RAKHINE STATE OF MYANMAR (2014 – 2018)

Abstract

Ethnic conflict and Rohingya social status that occured in Myanmar has become the world's attention. Since 1982 the Myanmar government has officially declared that the Rohingya are not included as ethnicities recognized in Myanmar through the Burmese citizenship law. With the existence of this Law the Rohingya do not have national identity and cause them to lose the legal basis for the protection of human rights in the country where they were born. Therefore, they chose to flee using a boat to a country that had ratified the 1951 Refuge Convention and 1967 protocol, one of them is Australia. Their existence in Indonesia as a transit country has no certainty of time because they are still waiting for the state to ratify the convention to be willing to accept them. Their presence in Indonesia as immigrants is a concern for the Indonesian government. Hence this thesis discussed the Indonesian government contribution to the humanitarian issue in The Rakhine State of Myanmar through humanitarian diplomacy. This thesis concluded that the awareness of countries, particularly Indonesia that could be reached by humanitarian diplomacy could contribute to stabilize the humanitarian issues in Rakhine State. The research is conducted by gathering data through interview and secondary sources using qualitative research method. The framework that is used to contruct the research is the concept of humanitarin diplomacy.