I have just returned from the planning Workshop for the 2023 conference on The Rohingya Crisis: What Next?. The Workshop was held in Hotel Europa, in Sarajevo, Bosnia – Herzegovina on 06 – 07 May 2022 and it was sponsored by the Haseane Foundation and the Arcane Commission. The Workshop was attended by some 20 Rohingya human rights experts from all over the world, including Dr Graeme Thom, Dr Hla Myint and myself from Australia. The objectives of the 2023 Conference are (1) to establish a roadmap for political solutions, (2) to stress on implementation of accountabilities for the genocide, and (3) the removal or root causes of the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and safe repatriation are the correct objectives.

Lt General (retired) MD Mahfuzar Rahman of Bangladesh and I were invited to deliver keynotes. My address is attached to this note.

The conference participants have also visited Srebrenica where in July 1995 the military and police forces of the Republica Srpska, supported by the Republic of Serbia, killed over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men in a few days. The International Court of Justice in The Hague and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia have both ruled that the crimes in Srebrenica were acts of genocide.

The Workshop has accepted a Declaration of Sarajevo which could be seen at: 07052022 Sarajevo Declaration

2022-05-05 SARAJEVO ROHINGHA WORKSHOP – speaking notes