Asia's Migrant Crisis Meeting Unlikely to Yield Solutions

Bangkok: A meeting in Bangkok aimed at addressing Southeast Asia's migrant crisis is unlikely to produce a binding agreement or plan of action to save thousands of people believed stranded on boats in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, participants said.

Friday's meeting will bring together 17 countries from across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and elsewhere in Asia, along with the United States, Switzerland and international organisations like UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.

But many attendees are not ministerial-level and the meeting may not carry the gravitas which organisers in Bangkok hope to achieve. According to the Thai ministry of foreign affairs, at least three of the countries central to the crisis will not be sending government ministers to the meeting: Myanmar, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Myanmar said today it had no plans to reach an agreement in Bangkok.

"We are going there only to discuss the regional crisis which all of the ASEAN countries are facing," Htein Lin, director-general at Myanmar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and head of the delegation from Myanmar, told Reuters.

More than 3,000 migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar have landed in Indonesia and Malaysia in recent weeks since Thailand launched a crackdown on human trafficking gangs earlier this month. About 2,600 are believed to be still adrift on abandoned boats, relief agencies have said.

Many of those who made it to shore are members of Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingya Muslim minority who live in apartheid-like conditions in Myanmar's Rakhine state. Other migrants are from Bangladesh.

A source at one of the international organizations, who declined to be named, said the level of representation of the countries at the head of the crisis was of concern.

"They're the main players," he said. "What can they achieve with that level of representation?"

Volker Turk, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, who is in Bangkok to attend the Friday meeting, said the complex crisis could not be resolved in one day.

"There are complex issues involved so I don't think it can just be resolved in a one day meeting but it's a good beginning and it's an important beginning," Turk told Reuters in a telephone interview.

The Myanmar government does not consider the Rohingya citizens, rendering them effectively stateless. It denies discriminating against the Rohingya or that they are fleeing persecution.

Almost 140,000 were displaced in deadly clashes with majority Buddhists in Rakhine in 2012. About 100,000 Rohingya have fled overseas since then, according to the Arakan Project, a Rohingya advocacy group.

Turk at UNHCR said resolving the issue of statelessness in Myanmar was central to resolving the migrant crisis.

"If that's not currently possible because of the law, making sure they are given an equivalent status, a legal status, is incredibly important to resolving the crisis," he said.

Sek Wannamethee, director-general of the Thai foreign ministry's information department, said the meeting was aimed at "commitment to international cooperation to resolve this humanitarian crisis."

"We hope that this meeting will yield similar short and long term solutions to the problem. This meeting is aimed at alleviating the suffering of those still at sea," said Sek.