Bangladesh’s Rohingya community: a crisis without an exit

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman said before the election that  the Rohingya would be welcome to remain in Bangladesh  until it was safe for them to return. His government has since  reaffirmed that the only sustainable solution is their ‘safe,  voluntary and dignified’ repatriation to Myanmar. Few would  disagree. The Rohingya belong in Myanmar, with citizenship,  safety and rights restored. Bangladesh cannot be expected to  carry indefinitely a crisis created by Myanmar’s persecution and  sustained by international failure. 

But almost nine years after the 2017 exodus, repatriation has  become a way of avoiding the much harder question: what rights  and protections will the Rohingya have while safe return remains  nowhere in sight? That question has become more urgent as the  crisis grows more protracted and international support recedes.  In May, the United Nations and its partners appealed for $710.5  million for the Rohingya response in 2026, to support up to 1.56  million Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi host community  members. The appeal is 26 per cent lower than the amount  sought in 2025. The UN has itself described the plan as  ‘scaled-down’ and ‘hyper-prioritised’, covering the minimum  required to sustain life-saving assistance. 

This is the grim arithmetic of the present moment: more people  in need, fewer resources available, no credible path to return, and  diminishing political willingness internationally to confront  either Myanmar or the humanitarian consequences of its  violence. Around 1.2 million Rohingya now live in Bangladesh,  while renewed conflict in Rakhine State has pushed further  arrivals across the border. In April, food support in the camps  was reduced: the most severely food-insecure households  continue to receive $12 per person per month, while others  received as little as $7. 

Humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned that  declining international funding is forcing reductions in assistance for Rohingya refugees. Photo: WFP 

While Bangladesh’s burden is repeatedly acknowledged by the  international community, declining funding has forced the  humanitarian response to shift from sustaining lives with dignity  to rationing increasingly limited forms of survival. The 2026  appeal, reduced even as the refugee population and its needs  have grown, signals the normalisation of long-term containment  without the political or financial commitment required to make  that containment humane. 

In effect, the absence of progress towards a durable solution is  being managed through progressively lower standards of support  for a population with little control over the conditions of its own  survival. ‘Bangladesh always believes in peaceful, dignified and  sustainable migration; however, the Rohingya crisis has now  become a complex and sensitive issue that poses a threat to our  national security’, said Bangladesh’s Home Minister Salahuddin  Ahmed, during a meeting with the UN Resident Coordinator in  May. He called for increased humanitarian funding under the  UN framework to address the crisis. 

Bangladesh has legitimate reasons to demand substantially  greater international support. The country did not create the  persecution that displaced the Rohingya. Host communities in  Cox’s Bazar have absorbed enormous social, economic and  environmental pressures over the last decade. But Bangladesh’s  own policies, which include confinement, restrictions on formal  education and livelihoods, and the insistence that any  meaningful improvement in refugees’ lives risks weakening the  commitment to repatriation, have helped produce the conditions  now being cited as evidence of the crisis.

Refugee advocates argue that access to recognised  education is essential if Rohingya children are not to lose an entire generation of opportunity. Photo: UNICEF 

This is the contradiction that the new government inherits. The  Rohingya are repeatedly described as dependent on  humanitarian aid, as though dependency were intrinsic to  refugee life. In reality, their vulnerability is closely tied to the  denial of legal opportunities to work, move and study. As  assistance shrinks, many refugees are compelled to find informal  work in and around the camps, through small trading, day  labour, transport work or poorly paid humanitarian roles.  Because this work has little legal recognition, it leaves them  vulnerable to exploitation, harassment, unsafe conditions and  arrest. At the same time, the absence of recognised education,  safe mobility and lawful income leaves young people with fewer  routes towards a viable future and greater exposure to trafficking,  criminal networks and armed influence. 

These are genuine security concerns in the camps, as highlighted  by the home minister. But they cannot be separated from a  containment policy that restricts the very opportunities that  might reduce desperation and insecurity. 

Restrictions on movement, employment and  daily life remain central features of Bangladesh’s containment-based approach to the Rohingya crisis. Photo: Rohingya Creative Production 

For the BNP government, the politics of repatriation also carries  a particular history. Government statements recall the  repatriation of Rohingya during the BNP governments of the late  1970s and early 1990s as examples of successful leadership. In  parliament, the foreign minister cited the return of 236,000  Rohingya under Khaleda Zia, mother of the present prime  minister, after the 1992 influx. But political memory is not shared  equally. Dhaka’s narrative of earlier repatriation as decisive  diplomacy sits uneasily beside Rohingya memories of return  without durable rights, safety or any protection against being  displaced once again. 

Recent reporting from the camps suggests that refugees are not  optimistic. Some hope the change of government may bring  attention to their rights. Others fear that invocations of past  repatriation drives may foreshadow renewed pressure to return  before safety and citizenship are secured. Their concerns extend  beyond return itself: they want education, livelihoods,  movement and dignity while they remain in Bangladesh.

The political terrain in Myanmar has also fundamentally  changed. The Myanmar military, responsible for the mass  atrocities that forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into  Bangladesh in 2017, no longer exercises authority in much of  Rakhine State. The Arakan Army’s rapid territorial expansion has  altered power on the ground, particularly in northern Rakhine,  while reports of abuse, insecurity and fraught relations with  Rohingya communities persist. Any repatriation today faces a  basic question: return to whose authority, under what  guarantees, and protected by whom? 

Ongoing conflict and uncertainty in Myanmar’s Rakhine State continue to undermine prospects for a safe, voluntary and dignified return. Photo: Reuters 

The new government has inherited an impossible crisis. It has  also inherited the temptation to offer old solutions to a radically  transformed reality: more diplomatic declarations, more appeals  to the international community, more assurances that return  remains the answer, even as the conditions for return recede  further. There has been no indication that the BNP will consider  a rights-based interim policy for the Rohingya, including  expanded formal education, regulated income-generating  opportunities, safer mobility, meaningful participation in camp  decisions, and protection against any return driven by coercion,  inducement or desperation. A government that repeatedly  invokes repatriation without articulating refugees’ rights in the  present ends up offering an exit strategy for Bangladesh rather  than a durable solution for the Rohingya. 

The question before the BNP government is therefore stark. Will  it treat repatriation as a promise of justice for the Rohingya, or as  justification for denying them a liveable present? A people driven  from their homeland cannot be kept in indefinite deprivation to  preserve the fiction that their displacement remains temporary.