Rohingya Refugees At Kutupalong Refugee Camp: How to Help the World’s Most Persecuted Stateless Group

By: Poema Sumrow

Photo by SAIKAT MOJUMDER/ WORLD FOOD PROGRAM

The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority group concentrated in the Rakhine state of Myanmar. They have endured ethnic-based discrimination for decades but were most notably denied citizenship after the passage of the Myanmar Citizenship Act of 1982, which rendered them stateless (Rhoads, 39). The situation escalated into full-scale ethnic cleansing when, in October 2016, a Rohingya militant group known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) attacked 30 police officers, leaving 12 of them dead. At the time, it was their deadliest attack to date (Lee, 61). ARSA’s resistance effectively kickstarted the “brutal campaign” of systematic ethnic cleansing carried out by the Myanmar government against the Rohingya (Albert et al. 2020). Since these initial attacks, the Rohingya people have faced an onslaught of political and military violence that has caused the internal displacement of nearly 2.8 million people within the country’s borders and has led 1.3 million Rohingya to seek refuge in neighboring countries (“Rohingya Crisis Explained”).

The 2018 UN Fact-Finding Mission in Myanmar estimates that since 2017, 30,000 Rohingya peoples have been murdered, more than 392 villages have been destroyed and thousands have been raped. In 2024, only 636,000 Rohingya live in their homeland (Van Den Assum 2024). Roughly 140,000 of the remaining Rohingya face merciless, inhuman persecution in internally displaced concentration camps. The Fact-Finding mission demanded that senior members of Myanmar’s military be put under investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes” (A/HRC/39/64). Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein, the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, defined the treatment of Rohingya by the Myanmar government as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” (Ra’ad HRC/36). The Fact-Finding mission estimates that in 2017, nearly 725,000 Rohingya had fled to the Kutupalong Refugee Camp in the Cox Bazaar region of Bangladesh, and that number has increased to nearly 1 million in 2024.

This policy brief addresses two pivotal ways international intervention shapes the Rohingya refugee crisis. Firstly, maintaining international financial aid helps alleviate the outcomes of Myanmar’s human rights abuses. Meeting financial quotas at Kutupalong refugee camp is necessary to fund programs that uphold the dignity of displaced refugees, specifically women and girls, by allowing them access to basic human necessities and broadening access to education. Secondly, international cooperation is a crucial step to bring Myanmar’s military officials to justice for their crimes against the Rohingya. It is paramount that foreign nations compel one another to formally submit complaints to the ICC or publicly advocate for an accelerated investigation into Myanmar’s crimes.

The intersection of religion and gender makes the lives of women and girls at Kutupalong uniquely difficult. A report by Minority Rights Group reveals that an average of 15 million liters of water are drawn each day to supplant the growing needs of the camp’s population and that even when water is accessible, it is not always clean-- more than 73% of the water from supplying wells was found to be contaminated with fecal matter (Belmonte 2023). The lack of access to clean water disproportionately impacts women and girls, who require clean water to maintain hygiene during menstrual cycles. Furthermore, binding gender expectations often hinder the safety of women in operating freely within society. Gender-based violence and child marriages are increasingly prevalent among Kutupalong communities. Education could be a critical tool in breaking the cycle of violence and poverty for young girls and women but still, fear of exploitation or abduction mingled with social pressures to steer clear of pursuing educational avenues discourages many from attending school. Her Turn, a UNHCR-affiliated organization, stresses that educating refugee girls reduces their vulnerability to sexual and gender-based violence, increases leadership skills, builds self-reliance, and increases their potential future earnings (“Her Turn”). To tackle these issues, UNHCR has spearheaded educational initiatives like SASA, Girls Shine, and Male Role Models at Kutupalong that raise awareness about the harmful nature of polarizing gender divisions (Saltmarsh 2022). Despite their successes, an ever present setback halts the realization of their goals: money. Since 2017, the United States has donated more than $2.4 billion to the Rohingya crisis both in and outside of Myanmar (USAID 2024). However, following the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the Financial Tracking Service estimates that nearly 45% of the $852 million required in humanitarian aid for the upkeep of Kutupalong has not yet been met in 2024 (“Joint Response Plan 2024”). The financial burden of Kutupalong undeniably weighs heavily on the international donor community, in both a numerical sense and in the moral heaviness that accompanies it; thus, maintaining humanitarian aid quotas is critical to safeguarding the health and safety of refugees, particularly vulnerable women and girls who lack immediate advocates in the camp (Campbell 2023). 

Even with adequate financial support, the refugee crisis in Bangladesh will never be neutralized until the flow of newly displaced Rohingya into Kutupalong significantly decreases. Holding the perpetrators of the Rohingya genocide accountable, a duty that lies with ICC, has never been more pressing. Despite the aforementioned evidence of ethnic cleansing in the 2018 UN Fact Finding Mission, the ICC has not yet prosecuted Myanmar prosecuted (A/HRC/39/64). In the case of the Russo-Ukrainian war, the ICC prosecutor for Ukraine announced an opening of the investigation into Russian war crimes only a month after Russia’s 2022 invasion and has since issued a high-profile arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin and his deputy (“Statement by Khan”). 43 different statute nations had reported Russia to the ICC by the March following the February invasion and statements condemning violence in Ukraine have been “forthcoming” by the ICC’s prosecutor for Ukraine (Chandran et al. 2023). Contrasingly, it took three years for the first dissenting country—The Gambia—to report Myanmar’s actions to the ICC. No such coordinated efforts or statements have yet been made regarding the Rohingya genocide (Albert et al. 2020). It is vital to the retribution mission of human rights activists that the international community raises flags against Myanmar’s political and military leaders to pressure the ICC into expediting the criminal investigation of their crimes against humanity. 

Addressing the root causes of the Rohingya refugee crisis requires urgent international intervention, both to halt ongoing violence and to ensure the long-term survival and dignity of the Rohingya people. While the goal is for Myanmar to amend the citizenship bill causing Rohingya statelessness, doing so would entail the derailing of decades of culture wars that are deeply entrenched in the fabric of Myanmar society. The only way forward is for the ICC to end impunities for the Myanmar government by prosecuting their leaders who are implicit in genocide. Furthermore, as the largest donor to the Rohingya, the United States wields both the burden of financially supporting a stateless group and  the power to set a precedent for the rest of the international community. By spearheading efforts for international organizations to meet financial quotas for Kutupalong, the U.S. can pave the way for Rohingya living in Bangladesh to be treated with the dignity that universal human rights should guarantee. Clearly, the international community has immense sway in influencing the due process of justice in international criminal courts and needs to do so. While financial aid is essential to maintaining the lives and dignity of refugees, without legal accountability for Myanmar’s crimes, these efforts will not be sufficient in any long-term scenario. Therefore, international support must go hand-in-hand with pressing for justice through the ICC. The international community must act hastily to continue providing relief to Rohingya and to see justice served.

The views expressed in this publication are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Rice Journal of Public Policy, its staff, or its Editorial Board.

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References

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