CRITICAL HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY: LIVED-EXPERIENCES OF STATELESS ROHINGYA WOMEN IN MALAYSIA AND BANGLADESH

The issue surrounding the Rohingya in Southeast Asia is a contemporary topic that warrants a serious scholarly pursuit in terms of research and for providing for a better understanding on the situation women in terms of their survival and resilience in times of statelessness. Today, Rohingya people remains to be stateless, and in diasporas in Southeast Asia, South Asia and the rest of the world.

This study looked into the plight of the Rohingya women and documented their ‘lifeworld’ perspective using critical hermeneutic phenomenology while pursuing the study in the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative study, it used phenomenology to find its meaning and gleaned on the lived-experiences of these women and to provide its interpretation, uses the hermeneutic circle in order to further deepen the analysis of the narratives of nine (9) Rohingya women who participated in the study. They have responded to a semi-structured, open-ended questions in the Google Form which were then mined through internet-based applications.

The result of the study revealed that for the theme of Pain, Rohingya women meant discrimination, suffering and genocide. In the theme of Hope, they continue to hope for more empowered women, improved women’s health and independent women. For Contentment, they meant that it was because of their refugee status, identity and community. For happiness, they refer Trust of Other Women, Work and Family. They are sad and refer to statelessness, No voice as a woman and unsafe communities. For sorrow, it meant harassment, child marriages, and no work. Finally, resilience was because they have Dignity, Faith in Allah, and Freedom.

Further, the study revealed that under the hermeneutic circle, discrimination, as an example, was interpreted and considered under the conditions that perpetuated violence against them were done by, aside from the Tatmadaw, civilian Buddhists population in Myanmar; and that there is lack of support for women in humanitarian efforts resulting into discrimination; and that their conditions are gender-based.