"Multinational Businesses and the Plight of the Rohingya", 11 June 2015

Photo credit: Flickr/Steve Gumaer

Following the entrance of hundreds of multinational businesses into the Burmese market...one might be forgiven for hoping that the Rohingya of the New Burma...would face a different fate. Yet, even in a more open and democratic Burma, the Rohingya continue to suffer, and there isn’t a single actor — governmental, corporate or otherwise — willing to take responsibility...

In late 2014, Suu Kyi warned that reforms in the country had stalled; yet, Burma saw more than $8 billion in foreign direct investment in FY 2014-15 — $3 billion more than anticipated and double the previous year’s total...In response, the Business & Human Rights Resource Center (BHRRC), arguably the leading NGO devoted exclusively to the issue of business and human rights, launched a project to track foreign investment in Burma...

Thus far, even Suu Kyi has failed to take a stand against what is happening to the Rohingya, arguably in order to avoid alienating the country’s Buddhist majority in advance of next year’s general election. The response of the international community has been similarly lacking, and the government denies that the Rohingya are even persecuted. So, what about the multinational companies now exploiting...an economy that could quadruple in the next 20 years?  Do they have a role to play?  There may not be any legal requirement compelling foreign companies to abandon the Burmese market, but surely there is some moral obligation to take a public stand against the persecution of the Rohingya. Burma is, after all, still a market controlled by the government and one subject to rampant corruption...[S]ome nontrivial portion of foreign investment in Burma lines the pockets of government officials, who are likely to be members of a military responsible for serious and continuing human rights abuses...Should Adidas, BMW, Chevron, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Ford, Gap, General Electric, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, PepisCo, Samsung, Shell, Unilever and the dozens of other international corporate behemoths not stand up and loudly criticize the Burmese government for its persecution of the Rohingya, threatening to once again leave the country if the government does not improve?