Myanmar: The Architecture of Statelessness

What the report says

Al Jazeera’s film “Myanmar: The Architecture of Statelessness” examines how the Rohingya were pushed into statelessness through decades of exclusionary policy and abuse, and how that history is now reflected in a genocide case before the International Court of Justice. The documentary focuses on Myanmar’s military regimes and their role in rewriting citizenship rules, limiting access to identity documents and using checkpoints and travel permits to restrict movement.

The piece also describes how segregation, incitement and repeated violence helped normalise the Rohingya’s removal from public life. It centers in particular on the 2016-2017 “clearance operations,” which the film says involved village burnings, mass killings and the forced flight of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into Bangladesh. Survivors, officials and legal experts are featured to help explain both the human toll and the legal questions now before the court.

The documentary’s broader significance is that it links citizenship policy to mass displacement and to international legal accountability. In general background terms, statelessness can leave a group without protection from the state and vulnerable to restrictions on movement, education and basic rights. Al Jazeera presents the ICJ case as a test of whether Myanmar’s actions meet the legal definition of genocide and what a ruling could mean for survivors and for accountability more broadly.