The Myanmar Refugee Crisis

The persecution of the Rohingyas in Myanmar is forcing tens of thousands to take to rickety fishing boats in order to escape the country. Neighboring countries, such as Bangladesh and Malaysia, have already taken in thousands of migrants fleeing from Buddhist persecution in Myanmar.  Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia are now refusing to allow the migrant boats to land on their shores.

Foreign Policy has used the CartoDB mapping platform to help explain the Southeast Asian Migrant Crisis.The article includes two interactive maps. The first map shows the flow of Myanmar migrants to neighboring countries using arrowed polylines. The map also uses CartoDB's annotated markers to add information about the situation faced by the Rohingyas in Myanmar and on their migrant journeys.

CartoDB's Annotations are text overlays which are linked to coordinates on the map (they can also be linked to a zoom range so that they only appear at certain zoom levels). Foreign Policy has added links to the map annotations, which lead to related news coverage of the refugee crisis in the area.


Foreign Policy's second map shows the estimated numbers of Myanmar refugees taken in by neigboring countries. The data for the second map shows the United Nations 2013 estimated number of Myanmar migrants living in each country.