Rohingya Refugees Call for Greater Say in Running Camps Abroad

For over 30 years, hundreds of thousands of Burmese people of Rohingya ethnicity, persecuted in Myanmar, have fled north to the coastal port city of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. This migration greatly accelerated after Myanmar’s military state in 2017 cracked down on Rohingya who remained in the country, prompting a mass exodus, with an estimated 605,000 crossing the border into Bangladesh between August and October 2017 alone, with 559,000 of them settling in camps near Cox’s Bazar.

NPQ has regularly covered the Rohingya’s plight—from their pleas for recognition of the genocide they face to the United Nations’ eventual call to prosecute Myanmar’s leadership for genocide.

Now aid agencies with multimillion-dollar aid budgets to support the Rohingya who are operating outside the city of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, stand accused by the refugees of failing to listen them.

The challenge noted by an unnamed spokesperson at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees is that “the Rohingya refugee population in Cox’s Bazar is more than 850,000 people. This alone presents a challenge in terms of ensuring that all voices are heard.” The spokesperson continues, “Furthermore, to communicate effectively with a very large population requires the utilization of technology. Currently, this presents challenges in Cox’s Bazar due to restrictions on mobile connectivity.”

Read more