In March 2024, international news media featured mobile phone footage of dozens of Rohingya refugees perched on the capsized hull of a wooden boat in the Andaman sea. The grimly photogenic scene near the north coast of Sumatra secured a brief spotlight on the plight of Rohingya refugees, and their increasingly desperate attempts to flee dire conditions in Myanmar and Bangladesh.
In the space of a few weeks in late August and September 2017, about 750,000 Rohingya refugees fled Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state, with most seeking sanctuary just across the border in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh. The area around Teknaf and Ukhia quickly became the world’s largest and most densely-populated refugee settlement, where almost a million Rohingya refugees are now living in a complex of 34 camps, with an average population density of 40,000 people per square kilometre. With about 105,000 more in Malaysia, 22,000 in India, approaching a thousand in Indonesia, and only 600,000 remaining in Rakhine, a large majority of the Rohingya population are living outside their homeland.
Ethnic cleansing
The 2017 exodus was the third major wave of Rohingya displacement to Bangladesh. For decades, the Rohingya have suffered marginalisation, exclusion and persecution in Myanmar. Stripped of their citizenship, they have been made stateless in an apartheid system. Military assaults forced large numbers of Rohingya to Bangladesh in 1978 and 1991- 92, most of whom subsequently returned.
The mass displacement of 2017 was triggered by a brutal and indiscriminate military crackdown after a militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), orchestrated attacks on about 30 police outposts and a military base on 25 August. Over the next two months, troops, police and local Rakhine vigilante groups launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya population, involving massacres, rapes and targeted arson attacks that completely or partially destroyed almost 300 villages and tens of thousands of Rohingya homes.
Many refugees say that the restrictions, conditions and treatment they now endure in Bangladesh are similar to — and, in some respects, worse than — what they experienced in Myanmar
A UN fact-finding mission determined that the 2017 crackdown had included ‘genocidal acts’ and in 2019 the Gambia brought charges of genocide against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This makes it one of only four genocide cases ever brought before the ICJ. In 1993, Bosnia-Herzegovina brought a case against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and there are two others that, like the Myanmar case, are ongoing: South Africa’s case against Israel and Ukraine’s case against Russia, in respect of Russian allegations that Ukraine has committed genocide.
As with the previous waves, the government of Bangladesh agreed to provide sanctuary to the Rohingya who arrived in 2017, but also sought to ensure that they would return to Myanmar as soon as possible. In practice, this has meant implementing policies that make it difficult and uncomfortable for the Rohingya to remain in Bangladesh over the medium- or long-term. Bangladesh is not a signatory to the 1951 Convention or the 1967 Protocol relating to the status of refugees. The Rohingya in Bangladesh are not registered as refugees or asylum seekers and are denied many of the rights associated with refugee status, including the rights to work and freedom of movement.
Ever-tightening restrictions
The refugees in Cox’s Bazar are confined to closed camps, with strict security measures and ever-tightening restrictions. Donors, host governments and humanitarian agencies have historically favoured encampment to care for (and control) displaced persons. However, camps are no longer seen as the only or best response to large-scale displacement. Refugees increasingly settle themselves in urban areas, human rights and humanitarian organisations have led campaigns against ‘warehousing’ them in camps, and some host states have rejected the camp model. Lebanon, for example, which has hosted large numbers of Iraqi and Syrian refugees, has a policy not to establish formal refugee camps. Bangladesh, by contrast, continues to insist on a very closed camp model with tight restrictions on residents.
In early 2020, barbed-wire fencing was erected around the camps, and after the arrival of Covid-19, the Bangladeshi government imposed draconian restrictions on movement. The Rohingya are prohibited from leaving the camps and are only allowed to work within them as ‘volunteers’ in junior roles in UN agencies and NGOs, with limits on the number of days they are permitted to work each month and salaries capped below market rates. The Bangladeshi authorities prohibit the provision of any education for Rohingya refugee children beyond informal primary-level classes, and Rohingya teachers who established community schools to compensate for the lack of formal and secondary-level education have been threatened with the confiscation of their identity documents or forcible relocation to Bhasan Char.
Bhasan Char is an isolated, flood-prone silt island in the Bay of Bengal. Despite objections from local and international aid agencies, the Bangladeshi authorities began relocating Rohingya refugees there in 2020. Ostensibly a solution to overcrowding in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps, relocation to the island is used by camp authorities as a threat and punishment. By mid-2023, about 30,000 Rohingya had been moved to Bhasan Char, where they face food and medicine shortages and even greater movement restrictions than in the camps in Cox’s Bazar.
Criminality and violence
Cox’s Bazar has long been a hotspot for illicit activity, with drugs smuggled from Myanmar across the porous border into Bangladesh. Yaba pills (a mixture of methamphetamine and caffeine) and, increasingly, the more lucrative crystal methamphetamine are brought in across the Naf river, and then trafficked onward to retail markets in Dhaka and elsewhere in Bangladesh. Many of the drugs coming in from Myanmar now pass through the refugee camps in the hands of Rohingya criminal groups, often working closely with Bangladeshi crime syndicates.
Bangladeshi law enforcement has failed to prevent the rise of criminal groups and associated violence in the camps. ARSA initially maintained a low profile and, seemingly tolerated by the Bangladeshi security forces, was able to establish itself as the dominant actor, setting up an administrative system, taxing refugees and intimidating those who spoke out against its involvement in the drug trade or other practices. From 2020, however, ARSA has come into conflict with other Rohingya armed groups. Up to a dozen different groups are now engaged in criminal activity in the camps, and violence has escalated, with a steep rise in killings and abductions over the past year or so. Whereas killings in the camps were once only carried out at night, daytime shootings have become commonplace. The targets are typically young men or community leaders, with women and children sometimes caught in the crossfire. Rohingya victims of crime face barriers to accessing police, legal and medical assistance, and the Bangladeshi authorities are failing to protect them from violence or prosecute those responsible.
The Armed Police Battalion (APBn), which took over responsibility for security in the camps from the army in July 2020, itself frequently poses a direct threat to Rohingya refugees. Tasked with maintaining security and enforcing restrictions on their movement, the APBn exercises its power arbitrarily, with reports of extortion, wrongful detention and extrajudicial executions of Rohingya refugees, and collusion between officers and criminals. Refugees report that both insecurity and abuse of power are much worse with the APBn than when the army were in charge. Many say that the restrictions, conditions and treatment they now endure in Bangladesh are similar to – and, in some respects, worse than – what they experienced in Myanmar.
Survival strategies
In the context of large-scale encampment and restrictions on their right to work, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are unusually heavily reliant on international aid. With much of the world’s attention focused on other crises, however, the Rohingya response has been severely underfunded in recent years. The 2023 UN joint response plan sought $876 million, and barely managed to raise two-fifths of that. The World Food Programme (WFP) was twice forced to cut already meagre food assistance, with the value of food vouchers for camp residents cut from $12 per person per month to $10 in March 2023 and then to $8 in June. The ration cuts resulted in hunger, malnutrition and disease. They may also have driven increases in intimate partner abuse and early marriage of adolescent girls. A slight increase in funding enabled the WFP to reverse some of the cuts from 1 January 2024, increasing the value of the monthly rations back to $10 – an improvement, but still far from sufficient.
With such limited international assistance, Rohingya refugee families need to generate income to supplement their rations. Volunteer positions offer a legal way to earn money, but opportunities are low-level, low-paid, and relatively scarce – especially since funding cuts have forced UN agencies and international NGOs to lay off volunteers. Many refugees are thus forced either to seek informal and illegal employment outside the camps, or to work for criminal groups inside the camps.
Those Rohingya who remain in Myanmar continue to live under a system of apartheid, without freedom of movement or other basic rights, such as access to adequate food, healthcare and education
Such survival strategies expose them to additional protection risks. Given they are prohibited from doing so, those Rohingya leaving the camps to work are vulnerable to extortion and violence by the APBn. They are also at risk of being trafficked or exploited by others who know that, without legal status, the Rohingya have little recourse to police protection if they are harmed or mistreated. Those who opt to join a criminal gang – or simply allow a gang to hide drugs in their shelters within the camp – may become targets of rival gangs or the APBn.
In both Bangladesh and Myanmar, Rohingya report a growing sense of hopelessness, and increasing numbers are embarking on the dangerous boat journey from the Bay of Bengal to south east Asia – an estimated 4,490 in 2023, up from 3,705 in 2022, itself a significant increase on previous years. Unscrupulous smugglers exploit them en route and, in 2023 alone, 569 are thought to have died at sea. Arriving safely in the Andaman sea is only half the battle. Neither Indonesia nor Malaysia has signed or ratified the 1951 Convention or the 1967 Protocol, and on occasion both have refused entry to refugee boats, driving them out of territorial waters. More than 100,000 Rohingya are registered with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Malaysia, which was once their preferred destination, but because they lack legal status, they are frequently exploited and face the constant risk of arrest and arbitrary detention. Indonesia was also once seen as a safe haven for Rohingya, but as in Malaysia, host communities in Aceh have become increasingly hostile, demanding deportations.
Integration, resettlement and return
There are generally understood to be three durable solutions for refugees: local integration in the country of asylum; resettlement to a third country; and voluntary return to the country of origin. The government of Bangladesh is doing everything possible to prevent local integration, from harsh restrictions on movement, livelihoods and education, to the prohibition of Bangla language in the camps and restrictions on internet access.
Resettlement is currently reserved for only the most vulnerable Rohingya in Bangladesh, and even then, the numbers are tiny, with fewer than 600 having been resettled across the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, and other countries by late 2023. Some human rights activists who have received serious death threats and even attempts on their lives remain stuck waiting for years with little hope of imminent resettlement.
The 2021 military coup in Myanmar has complicated the prospects for repatriation. On the one hand, the military itself is responsible for ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya population in Rakhine, so safe and voluntary return seems unlikely as long as the junta runs the country. On the other hand, since the coup, the Arakan army has gained control of much of the countryside in central and northern Rakhine, and this has led to a reduction in inter-communal tensions. The Arakan army’s leadership has emphasised that the majority Burmans, rather than Muslims, are the real enemy of the Rakhine people, moving to include Rohingya in the lower levels of its bureaucracy and easing movement restrictions on the Rohingya in the areas it controls.
The military junta in Myanmar has shown interest in taking back some Rohingya, in the hope that this would relieve some of the international pressure following the coup and strengthen its defence at the ICJ. However, those Rohingya who remain in Myanmar continue to live under a system of apartheid, without freedom of movement or other basic rights such as access to adequate food, healthcare and education. More than 120,000 are effectively detained by junta authorities in displaced person camps that were set up more than a decade ago. Moreover, Myanmar has refused to meet the main demands of the refugees, in particular regarding citizenship.
Large-scale refugee situations have sometimes been addressed through tripartite agreements between the countries of origin, first asylum and resettlement, as when the 1989 comprehensive plan of action was agreed for the Indochinese boat people. While seemingly still a long way off, such an agreement may offer the Rohingya their best hope for sustainable safety, rights and freedoms. Even if such an agreement could be reached, it would come at a cost, as maintaining Rohingya culture, language and political community would be difficult if the world’s Rohingya were to disperse across several different parts of the world.
