#WeAreAllRohingyaNow Approach
Channel: We Are All Rohingya Now
Date: 21/03/2017

The approach to the #WeAreAllRohingya now campaign, explaining how we will be reaching out to multinational corporations to stand against the ongoing genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar.

For more information about the campaign visit http://allrohinyganow.org 

To register for action alerts go to http://bit.do/rohingyaregister

Approach:

The #WeAreAllRohingyaNow campaign is reaching out to multinational corporations to take a stand against the ethnic cleansing and persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar, and to call for a restoration of their citizenship.

There are two main reasons we have adopted this approach: 

Firstly, we believe that the underlying cause of why the Rohingya are being driven out now is related to economics and development in that area. Religious and ethnic prejudices have been incited and exploited primarily to keep these economic motives obscured. 

Secondly, multinational corporations have enormous power and influence over state policy, not only in Myanmar, but in the Western countries as well. Of the 100 largest economic entities in the world, nearly half of them are corporations, not states. They lobby governments, they participate in crafting policy, they can make or break economies in the developing world; they have tremendous leverage.

We want to engage with companies in a positive way. We want to help them understand that it is in their interest to actively work to end the atrocities in Myanmar, and ultimately to restore citizenship to the Rohingya. This is an issue that millions of people in Southeast Asia care about, and a growing number of people all around the world; and it is a very clear issue.

There is nothing controversial about condemning genocide or promoting peace; there is no loss for a company that does this. On the contrary, any company that commits itself to help resolve this issue will see its value in the market increase; and any company that remains silent will damage its reputation.

And we don’t want to see company’s just passing the buck to the United Nations to act. The United Nations are constrained by politicians, who are constrained by economic priorities and pressures from corporations. So we want to see corporations themselves use the leverage that they hold, in their business negotiations, to bring about a positive and fair outcome for the Rohingya.

We have significant grassroots support both globally and in the region, and direct action is certainly an option that is available to us. But we prefer to work in conjunction with businesses, not in confrontation. Of course, it will be up to consumers to decide whether the actions of our multinational corporations are satisfactory.

We encourage you all to join our campaign, by registering to receive our action alerts, which we will send to you via email or Twitter direct message: simple steps that you can participate in, in your own time, from wherever you are. The more we stand in solidarity on this issue, the more we act together, the stronger we will become. The link to register is bit.do/rohingyaregister or you can find it on our website at allrohingyanow.org. Thankyou