Guest contributor
Noor Azizah
I recently returned from my second visit to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh—the largest refugee settlement on Earth, home to nearly one million Rohingya people who have been displaced from their homeland in Myanmar’s Arakan (Rakhine) State.
What I encountered wasn’t merely a humanitarian emergency—it was the ongoing disappearance of a people, happening quietly, family by family, dream by dream.
When I last visited in early 2023, conditions were already unbearable. But returning in June, I found a reality so much harsher that it left me gutted. The deterioration is not only visible—it’s deeply felt.
In one of the makeshift bamboo shelters, I sat with a woman whose voice barely rose above a whisper. She told me she had not slept in days—not from the heat or lack of food, but from constant terror.
Each night, she stays awake, listening for danger, holding her children close. She does not let her daughters leave the shelter after dark. Too many women have been assaulted in the short walk to the latrine.
Rohingya mothers are absorbing the toll of fear and trauma to shield their children from a world that offers them no safety.
In another part of the camp, I met a toddler named Abdurahman. He was just three when he was shot in the leg while escaping Myanmar. A bullet tore through his leg.
His father was gunned down before his eyes. His mother, desperate and grieving, carried his limp body across the Naf River, not knowing if he would make it to the other side alive.
At a small clinic run by the French charity Doctors without Borders (MSF), I stood in a room with five girls. None of them looked older than fifteen. All had become mothers—because of rape.
These are not isolated tragedies. They are daily realities for a stateless people caught in an unending purgatory.
What’s even more heartbreaking is what’s happening beyond the trauma. Basic survival is being stripped away.
Food rations have been slashed. Over 6,500 informal learning centres have shut down. Half a million children are now growing up with no education, no protection, and no direction.
And while services are shrinking, pressure is mounting. The push for “voluntary repatriation” has returned. But what are they being asked to return to?
Rakhine is still dangerous. Civilians are still being killed, arrested, and disappeared. The conditions that forced us to flee have not changed—they’ve worsened. The ancestral Rohingya homeland in northern Rakhine has been taken over by an ethnic Rakhine nationalist armed group called the Arakan Army (AA).
According to the U.N., 150,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh over the last year of AA control in northern Rakhine.
Despite this, legal pathways for refugees in Bangladesh are nearly nonexistent. Resettlement remains out of reach for the vast majority. Fewer than one percent are being offered the chance to rebuild their lives in safety.
This has left many Rohingya, especially women-headed households and unaccompanied children, with two impossible options: wait endlessly in the camps with no future, or risk death at sea in search of dignity.
This is not sustainable. It is not protection.
What I heard repeatedly from those I met was not just grief or despair—it was clarity. The people know what they want. Rohingya refugees are not asking for pity. They are demanding rights. They are calling for inclusion in the future of Myanmar—not as an afterthought, but as equal citizens.
A mother told me, “We will return, but not as ghosts. We want to go home as people—with papers, safety, and the right to live.”
True return must mean more than just crossing a border. It must mean the restoration of citizenship, safety, and dignity. And that future must be co-created with Rohingya voices at the centre—from the beginning.
During my time in Cox’s Bazar, I saw not only pain, but also extraordinary resilience. Despite unimaginable trauma, people are organizing, advocating, surviving.
Women are stepping up as community leaders. Youth are finding ways to learn in secret. There is still so much hope left—but it cannot survive without solidarity.
This is a critical moment. The international community must act. More resettlement spaces must be opened—particularly for the most vulnerable.
Legal status, education, and livelihoods must be expanded for those who remain. And transitional justice must be pursued—with Rohingya not just as witnesses, but as architects of what comes next.
We are not waiting in silence. We are telling our stories, building our own movements, and preparing for a future where no Rohingya child has to grow up wondering if they belong.
Let this visit not be just a report. Let it be a reminder that behind every statistic is a person with a name, a memory, a right to be seen.
Noor Azizah is the co-executive director of the Rohingya Maiyafuinor Collaborative Network, a women-led, Rohingya-led, and refugee-led organization working on Rohingya human rights issues, SGBV, education, and translocal solidarity with a focus on women, peace, and security.
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