Canada’s special envoy to the Rohingya crisis says this country needs to consider granting refugee and resettlement status to Myanmar’s persecuted ethnic Rohingya.

Nearly 700,000 have fled western Myanmar’s Rakhine state to neighbouring Bangladesh and are now living in camps.

(National Observer/Alex Tetreault)

Bob Rae, the former interim Liberal leader and Ontario NDP premier makes 16 recommendations in his final report on the seven-month-old crisis.

He says Canada should take a leadership role by ramping up humanitarian aid and development efforts as well as demonstrating a willingness to welcome refugees from the region and encourage a discussion among ”like-minded countries” to do the same.

Rae also says Canada needs to play a leading role in the investigation by the International Criminal Court of possible war crimes and that Nobel laureate and honorary Canadian citizen Aung San Suu Kyi is not above a potential probe. 

(Reuters)

He suggests the Trudeau government could target some of Myanmar’s military leaders but stops short of recommending further sanctions because, saying those would only hurt the 50-million people of an already impoverished country.