The situation is uncertain for Rthe ohingya people in Southeast Asia. The vital humanitarian assistance has been reduced to the refugee camps in Bangladesh, where close to a million rohingy is located. At the same time, violence is escalating in the homeland of Myanmar, which threatens the uncertain future of the ethnic group.
The tension in the air is great when 22 young people in blue, white and yellow match kits enter the football pitch. Tens of thousands of spectators sit around the pitch, whose deafening cheers are only drowned out by the commentator's engaging descriptions on the loudspeaker system. When the referee blows 90 minutes later, the blue and white Hashuratha FC have defeated Fokira Bazar FC 1-0 in today's Rohingya Football League match at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox's Bazar. The league is a newly started project by the Bangladeshi government in collaboration with several NGOs. The purpose is to spread joy, create community and combat the rising crime rate - above all among young people.
For many of the 400 children in Kutupalong – now the world's largest refugee camp – the time spent in south-eastern Bangladesh represents the largest part of their lives. For the very youngest, their country of origin, Myanmar, is foreign land, even though the border is only a few kilometers away.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar
The Muslim minority group Rohingya have had a vulnerable position in Myanmar and have been discriminated against since the 1960s, when the military took power in Burma. The military has generally been critical of ethnic minorities, especially Muslims.
In 2017, a large percentage of the Rohingya people fled their home region of Rakhine in Myanmar as a result of the military's escalating violence. Only during the month of August that year over 750 Rohingya crossed the border to Bangladesh. Reports from the United Nations have described the widespread cases of, among other things murder, torture and rape against the Rohingya people as acts of genocide. The accusations were denied by the democratically elected government led by Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, which has long had a complicated relationship with the country's often independently acting military. The situation worsened further in the country in 2021 when the military regained full power in a coup d'état.
Today, the military junta in Myanmar widely uses violence against the civilian population as a weapon to maintain its position. Since last year, the violence has further escalated as a result of several individual rebel groups launching offensives in the country, and charges of war crimes have been directed at both the military and resistance groups. Among warring parties are support for the Rohingya people low, something that risks prolonging the group's vulnerable role regardless of the outcome of the conflict. Thus, the situation for the Rohingya people is hardly closer to a solution – seven years after the mass exodus from Myanmar.
Reduced international support worsens the situation
Everyday life in the refugee camps in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries is characterized today by constant insecurity for the Rohingya people. In Bangladesh, where the majority are located, the government continues to assume that the Rohingya people should be able to return to Myanmar in the near future. In practice, this means a strict ban on going outside the refugee camps Fence, which means that the sources of income for the Rohingya are extremely limited. Thus, almost one million refugees in the country are completely dependent on humanitarian assistance.
International aid organizations contributes today with everything from food rations and water for healthcare and education for the Rohingya in the refugee camps, but the alarms about the serious situation have become more frequent. In October, the UN refugee agency UNHCR organized a meeting on the situation of the Rohingya, and representatives from, among others, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the United States and various civil society organizations participated.
- Rohingya who fled Myanmar must not be forgotten, noted refugee commissioner and head of UNHCR, Filippo Grandi, who said that the focus has shifted to other conflicts in the world.
At the meeting, it was presented, among other things, that only 40 percent of the total sum for the UN's humanitarian aid to the Rohingya for 2024 has been financed - a decrease of 20 to 30 percentage points from previous years. This is not least visible from the EU, whose support for Rohingya refugees in 2024 is 19,5 million euros, which is half of the support for 2023. If aid does not increase, the vital humanitarian assistance risks becoming insufficient. At the same time, Bangladesh's patience is also not to be taken for granted, Grandi said.
A crisis across many borders
The consequences of a worsening situation for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are already visible today. The reduced humanitarian aid means that more and more people take the route east by sea, towards Thailand, Indonesia or Malaysia. The boat trips involve extreme risks in one of the world's most dangerous waters, and In 2023, more Rohingya refugees lost their lives along this route than any other year since 2014. For those who actually arrive, difficulties in finding jobs await and a growing resistance from parts of the local population. In December Indonesian students stormed a refugee shelter in Banda Aceh and demanded the disappearance of the Rohingya people. Among other things, many are dissatisfied with one alleged ingratitude from arriving Rohingya refugees and that they will be integrated into society instead of returning to their homeland when they can.
Under the summit in Bangkok, the ideal solution to the current crisis of Rohingya refugees, which the United Nations, and the countries that have received the most Rohingya refugees strongly support, was again reiterated: a safe return to Myanmar. At the same time, the right conditions for this are far away at the moment, due to the continued uncertain domestic situation in Myanmar.
- The crisis will only worsen unless the root cause is addressed - Myanmar's illegal military junta, says Tom Andews, UN rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar.
Still waiting inside the refugee camps
The future remains highly uncertain for the Rohingya people, but life continues in Kutupalong, as well as in other refugee camps outside Myanmar.
Along a dirt road, there are vendors offering everything from fruit to clothes, and very close by, children fit a football to each other. In a classroom filled with colorful drawings where informal educational programs are held nine-year-old Aisha Bibi tells a visitor that she wants to be a police officer and ten-year-old Mohammed that he wants to be an engineerr. It is for them, and for the hundreds of thousands of other children in the refugee camp, that efforts are needed to continue spreading hope for a brighter future.
- [When we win] both the supporters in place and us players experience peace, says Nur Kalima, one of the players in the Rohingya Football League, for Radio Free Asia.
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