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Paper short abstract

Despite repeated failures of top-down post-conflict interventions, Rohingya survivors demonstrate how grassroots activism fosters justice and peace. Drawing on fieldwork in Bangladeshi camps, this article examines bottom-up participation, its transformative potential, and its challenges.

Paper long abstract

Over 40 percent of post-conflict societies return to conflict within a span of five years. Despite substantial investment in ‘top-down’ blueprints, projects and mechanisms, the most common outcome of a civil war is another war. Its been increasingly suggested that the issue of bottom up approach of survivors’ participation needs to put on highest priority to fight against impunity and sustain peace in any post conflict society. Especially for a displaced population like Rohingya community, movements and activism from grass root level is imperative in absence of any ongoing formal justice initiative. This local ownership of conflict transformation is a ‘sensitive’ and ‘overlooked’ issue has also been recently recognized in the UN Secretary-General’s Report on the Rule of Law and Transitional Justice suggesting a need for respect and support for local leadership to sustainable reformation. The reason is, local responses have tended only to be implemented in a vague, weak and ad hoc manner. This article aspires to see the potential of unique, bottom-up participatory approaches of Rohingya displacees through awareness, education and community involvement. In my field work in last December in the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, I have experienced their immense empowerment to close the justice gaps both from individual and collective level. They are involved with various grassroots movements like documentation, education and awareness on various human rights issues, cultural activities and social media activism which are enabling them to tell their own stories and to ensure any further oppression against them.