Reconfiguring Transnational Humanitarian Intervention in Post-Conflict Space: A Comparative Analysis of UNHCR Policy on Rohingya Refugee Crisis in ASEAN and SAARC Countries (2012-2018)

This scholarly paper seeks to analyse the policy capacity of UNHCR in mitigating transnational refugee crisis of Rohingya minority in a regionalized setting by examining the interplay between the UN agency with ASEAN and SAARC bodies as well as by identifying strategic discursive approach within both regions to comply to the UN mechanism on refugee crisis management. In extension to which, this paper further attempts to utilize different key literatures on policy capacity and protracted social conflicts to assess whether competences and capabilities of regional, state and global actors are under theorized or under applied empirically. Furthermore, various fundamental pieces from protracted social conflict are to be deliberated to discuss and be referred to one of the contesting paradigms particularly when it comes to historical legacy of British hegemonic power in Rakhine state and the genesis of Rohingya community as a whole. Eventually, building from this framework, methodology of comparative analysis will be operationalized to unveil slight superior policy outputs in UNHCR-ASEAN cooperation while UNHCR partnership with SAARC is near to non-existent whose joint intervention forms capacity deficit leading to policy decline and sub-optimal result