Naema Jannath argues the Covid-19 Pandemic has made the conditions of Rohingya refugees worse and argues we should not forget their plight.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Rohingya are one of the world’s largest stateless groups of refugees (Human Rights Watch, 2021). The Rohingya have been disregarded as citizens of The Union of Burma since the 1962 coup d’état by General Ne Win, despite having lived in Arakan State (now part of Burma) since the 8th century.[1]

Burmese Citizenship was enacted in 1982, a step that saw the Rohingya stripped of their citizenship. Since 2017, over a million Rohingya were forced to flee to Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazaar district (Ullah, 2021). Numerous socio-economic consequences arise from having a stateless identity, including the lack of access to basic rights such as healthcare, employment, and education(Milton et al., 2017; UNHCR, 2016). This kind of systemic exclusion leads to widespread discrimination and oppression.

Lack of access to these fundamental rights can have detrimental effects on the progression and well-being of a whole community.

We must consider the socio-economic challenges that have arisen for one of the country’s poorest districts. This includes a shortage in the labour market as they’re willing to work for very low wages, low tourism in the Saint Martin Island of Cox’s Bazaar due to the instability of the crisis, and recent cases of human trafficking (Kudrat-E-Khuda, 2020). Bangladesh must review its approach and develop sustainable, long-term solutions for these challenges.

Coronavirus Challenges – Interview with one of the Founders and Directors of Restless Beings.

The Coronavirus pandemic has only further exacerbated the crisis. To explore the impact of Covid on the Rohingya, I interviewed one of the directors of Restless Beings.
Restless Beings is a human rights organisation based in London, that has been running for 15 years. They work internationally with a particular focus on genocide, refugee crisis, and women and children. Restless Beings have been working with the Rohingya since late 2008 and were one of the first organisations/charities to raise awareness about the situation.[2]

When asked about some of the challenges faced in the community during the pandemic, the Director commented:

“Education and awareness were literally at zero, the fear factor was humongous. The whole world went into shutdown and lockdown. All the services that have been helping Rohingya through
2017-2020, literally overnight disappeared. There are no news channels in the Rohingya community and people don’t have access to the internet. While the whole world was learning how to wash their hands and keep a 2m distance, which we have the privilege to do so, people don’t have that privilege in a million-person camp, in such a small confined space. There is no running clean water let alone washing your hands. Food became a problem as no agencies were going in to provide it.

In Ramadan, we asked the diaspora community of Rohingya across Europe and America, to put together a short video, which included all the advice we have been receiving but for the Rohingya in their language, and then we spread that like wildfire. This massively impacted the community’s understandings.”

Another significant impact is particularly on women and children. In Cox’s Bazar, 94 percent of recorded Gender Based Violence incidents were perpetrated by intimate partners (International Rescue Committee, 2021). This can come from anxiety over food shortages which can turn into aggression in a crowded household during lockdown (Chiwona-Karltun et al., 2021). Moreover, adolescents are affected as their education has been disrupted. Remote access to educational support is non-existent (Mahamud Magan et al., 2022).

“A lot of the schools are still closed. A big reason for that is because people simply didn’t have the organisational skills or agencies didn’t have the funding from donors around the world, including from the state level. Every country went into their emergency budgets for furlough and PPE, so money for these kinds of causes wasn’t available and it wasn’t sought after either. So lots of organisations simply shut down their operations and haven’t resumed since. That kind of coincides more and more with the drug trade that passes through Burma into Bangladesh through the Rohingya, becoming more prevalent, less military, less police force becoming observant of what’s going on.”

Government of Bangladesh Response during the Pandemic

During the pandemic, the government has worked with partners such as UNHCR, to help provide the necessary COVID protection: hospital beds, food packages, and vaccines. However, this was rolled out late and in a limited capacity. Also, the consequence of shutting down schools without access to alternative means of learning has negatively hindered Rohingya children’s learning development (Mahamud Magan et al., 2022). .
“They could have handled the education a bit better, they shut down education. I understand while most of the world did the same but they found alternative means, which weren’t simply available for the Rohingya. The policy was that school wasn’t going to open until I think about September 2021- that’s far too long and the rest of Bangladesh has opened up in certain parts before that.”

When looking back at any country’s response to the pandemic – we always ask if could they have handled it better? Was the response sufficient? When asking one of the Directors of Restless Beings the same, they commented:

“Look, I think a lot of it is not about the Government itself but I think it’s more about what politicians have said how public opinion has changed so vastly. You can’t criticise any Government around the world for how they have handled the pandemic because no one knew what they were doing. Bangladesh is not a developed country and it is very heavily populated. With that in mind and Bangladesh’s economic situation, actually Bangladesh didn’t fair off that badly. Compared to India, which have the same population density and better economics, they went through a terrible time, Bangladesh didn’t necessarily go through that, so therefore the Rohingya didn’t necessarily go through that.”

The Future of Rohingya.

We have seen the recent fires in Rohingya Camps and the devastating flooding in Bangladesh.These events will become frequent as a result of climate change.3 Burma itself is going through a turbulent period of political changes. The anxious question of what the future for the Rohingya remains uncertain. Restless Being Co-director states:

“The only solution for these people is that they go back to the homes, back to their safety and security, their motherlands but with dignity and with protection. Now, that is such a pipe dream at the moment because it’s so far from anything like a reality that can be imagined. Burma itself is going through a massive change since its military coup on February 1st 2021- a movement for democracy. The people of Myanmar are uprising against their military that has been there for 60 years. This isn’t going to be easy and isn’t going to be quick. Then really, the Rohingya are very far down on the list of things that might happen in Burma.”

Moreover, the Burmese government’s announcement that they are planning to move some Rohingya to a cyclone-prone island called Bhasan Char undermines any long-term solutions for returning (HRW, 2021). Currently, there are 19,000 Rohingya refugees estimated on the island (UNHCR, 2021). Many of these people have not chosen to voluntarily move, which has led to separations from family and situations of restricted freedom. It is alarming how many countries have begun to engage in these unethical and inhuman practices. One aspect we can take away from Ukraine and other refugee situations is that no one chooses to become a refugee. At the end of the day, the Rohingya community would just like to go back to their motherland with respect and dignity. We must prioritise helping Rohingya achieve that goal.

Naema Janath is part of the Ayaan Institute’s Research Associate Programme. The programme provides training and mentoring in many areas for Associates and offers them the chance to write an article for publication through conducting their own research.

References:

[1] https://www.brouk.org.uk/about-the-rohingya/

[2] https://restlessbeings.org/projects/rohingya

[3] https://restlessbeings.org/articles/update-rohingya-villages-under-fire-once-again

Gerhardt, L. (2021). GBV Trends Among Rohingya Refugees in Cox’s Bazar COVID-19 Update Bangladesh Apartment A4-5 Road 95 House CEN (D)-3 Gulshan-2 Dhaka 1212. International Rescue Committee.

‘An Island Jail in the Middle of the Sea’. (2021). Human Rights Watch. Available at: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2021/06/bangladesh0621_web.pdf

Kudrat-E-Khuda (Babu) | Michael William Scott (Reviewing editor) (2020) The impacts and challenges to host country Bangladesh due to sheltering the Rohingya refugees, Cogent Social Sciences, 6:1, DOI: 10.1080/23311886.2020.1770943

Unicef (2021). Myanmar situation. [online] Global Focus. Available at: https://reporting.unhcr.org/myanmarsituation.

Milton, A., Rahman, M., Hussain, S., Jindal, C., Choudhury, S., Akter, S., Ferdousi, S., Mouly, T., Hall, J. and Efird, J., 2017. Trapped in Statelessness: Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 14(8), p.942. 10

S M Asik Ullah, Kazuo Asahiro, Masao Moriyama, Masakazu Tani., 2021. Socioeconomic Status Changes of the Host Communities after the Rohingya Refugee Influx in the Southern Coastal Area of Bangladesh. Sustainability 13:8, pages 4240.

Chiwona-Karltun, L., Amuakwa-Mensah, F., Wamala-Larsson, C., Amuakwa-Mensah, S., Abu Hatab, A., Made, N., Taremwa, N. K., Melyoki, L., Rutashobya, L. K., Madonsela, T., Lourens, M., Stone, W., & Bizoza, A. R. (2021). COVID-19: From health crises to food security anxiety and policy implications. Ambio, 50(4), 794–811. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01481-y

Mahamud Magan, I., Patankar, K., & Ahmed, R. (2022). The educational, social, and emotional impact of COVID19 on Rohingya youth: Implications for educators and policymakers. Children and youth services review, 142, 106619. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2022.106619