One Year on, the Rohingya Crisis in Bangladesh Has a New Problem

It’s past noon at the Kutupalong Refugee Camp in Ukhia, Bangladesh, and 18-year-old Rahim* is enjoying a post-lunch smoke at a tea stall located near the camp’s bazaar. Surrounded by other youngsters of the same age, he whiles away his time listening to songs on mobile phone speakers and drinking sweetened milk tea.

“What else can we do?” Rahim asks with a wry smile. “There are no schools for us in the camp and it’s difficult to get work. This is how we spend most of our time,” he says.

Much like the majority of other residents of the camp, Rahim and his family fled to this part of Bangladesh after their village in the Rakhine state of Myanmar was attacked by the state’s forces in August last year. Exactly one year ago, approximately 6,93,000 Rohingya travelled 60 kilometers—either by foot or by boat—across the border to safety here. They joined an estimated 3,00,000 Rohingya who had already settled in the area since 2012.

Coordinated efforts by the Bangladeshi government and aid agencies from across the world over the last one year have helped address most of the basic problems of the refugees in the camps related to food and shelter. However, as time has progressed, more complex issues have begun to surface. One of those is the opportunities related to the Rohingya adolescents.

According to the UNHCR, 55 percent of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh is below the age of 18, a demographic that compelled the Bangladesh government to especially focus on the education sector. Some 1,400 learning centers were built at the Rohingya camps in across 6,000 acres in Ukhia, in which 1,40,000 children from the camps were enrolled by the authorities. Most of them are below the age of 14. While an accepted curriculum is yet to be formed, they are given early grade lessons on the Burmese language, Mathematics and English.

This shift, positive as it is, has, however, left out the education requirements of the adolescents and the youth: most of the girls and boys above the age of 15. And as a number of Rohingya leaders and teachers in the camps would testify, it’s this very demographic that has really taken a hit. “The little children are getting to learn basic things. But there is no training or education system for those who are a bit older,” says Rahim Hossen, a Rohingya teacher at the Balukhali camp in Cox’s Bazar. Hossen is one of the few refugees in the camp to have attended a university—he was enrolled in the Sittwe University and was in his second year when the exodus began last year. He believes, rightly so, that the absence of education for the youth could potentially destroy the future generation of his country.

“Without education, the boys are becoming gundas and they are going to the wrong path. Because they don’t have much to do, they smoke unwanted things in the evening and get involved in other bad activities. Without education and guidance, they are losing their character,” says Hossen.

According to a report published by the Inter-sector Coordination Group (ISCG)—an international group that manages different aid agencies in the camp—earlier this month, a key gap in the education response has been the inadequate coverage of adolescents between 15 to 24 years. The report states that less than 2,000 adolescents have access to education or life skills training in these camps—out of the 1,17,000 who still need it.

In a different report published in July, the ISCG also states that adolescent boys in the camp are more vulnerable to “risky” drug use and trafficking for labour.

As far as the drugs aspect is concerned, a lot more research needs to be done to find out the extent to which the refugees are involved in the drug trade in Bangladesh. However, a number of Rohingya have been caught by the police in recent times for distributing yaba, a drug made up of caffeine and methamphetamine.

Over the last decade, the amount of yaba being smuggled into Bangladesh has increased drastically. In 2017 alone, 4 crore pieces of yaba were seized by the police. Law enforcers in Bangladesh have repeatedly stated that the drug, which translates to ‘crazy medicine’ in Thai, enters Bangladesh from Myanmar. Concerned authorities from Myanmar and Bangladesh have met a number of times in a bid to solve the issue, with the latter even providing lists of factories in Myanmar which produces the drug.

In the last three months, the Bangladesh government has stepped up its anti-narcotics drive and hundreds have been arrested. In May this year, two out of six drug peddlers arrested from the capital’s Dakkin Khan turned out to be Rohingya. One of the Rohingya refugees was a minor and they were reportedly lured to carry yaba tablets in exchange of money. In July, the dead bodies of Shamsul Huda, a top listed drug peddler and Rahim Ullah a Rohingya refugee from the Leda camp in Teknaf were found floating on a water body in Teknaf.

Fearing these forms of repercussions, certain parents in the camps have been forcing their sons to marry early. And Rahim is one such example. “My parents forced me to get married because they were scared I would get involved in bad activities. Had I been studying or working, things could have been different,” he says.

Jamil Ahmed, 16, who works at a tea stall at the Kutupalong camp, echoes Rahim’s sentiments. “Most kids of my age are very worried. I know many of my friends who managed to work for just one to two months in the last one year. They don’t have much to do. They are mostly frustrated about their future. We all really want to just study and learn more,” says Jamil.

Ask Jamil how he sees himself five years from now and there’s a long pause. “What is the point of thinking about the next five years?” he exclaims after a minute. “Yes, I do think a lot. Where will I stay? What will I do? There is a lot to think about. But there is no point. Right now, I am thinking about the present and we either need work or we need to study,” he says.

The situation is a lot worse for adolescent girls. For one, girls above the age of 15 are traditionally not allowed to pursue education. It’s not uncommon for Rohingya girls to marry at a young age. Till last year, there were reports that stated that young girls were forced to marry early in order to secure more food in the camps, since the provision of food was based on the number of households. The Refugee, Relief and Repatriation Commission (RRRC) in Bangladesh also believe that marriage has become a sense of entertainment in the camps. This is a problem, since the government has limited space to accommodate the one million refugees.

According to a survey conducted by Plan International, which comprised 300 girls in the Bangladeshi camps, freedom of movement is one of the biggest problems that adolescent girls face. “Cultural factors and concerns about security mean that older girls are confined to their households,” the report states. “Even the progressive families who want their daughters to study cite flaws in the camp’s current education system. “Parents themselves stated they supported their daughters attending school but cited practical barriers around distance to schools and a lack of female teachers as the main reason for their non-attendance.”

Ismatara, 16, is one such victim. “At home [in Myanmar], I studied till class eight. My family has no problem with me studying, but once the crisis began, we had to come here and the quality of education in the camps here is very basic. It’s not appropriate for me,” she explains.

She hasn’t lost hope yet. The UNICEF is working on a curriculum meant for older students and is planning to launch it later this year. Until then, Ismatara spends most of her time teaching a dozen children at her place everyday. “I teach because I want them to lead a better life than us,” she says.

The ISCG believes that the adolescent Rohingya girls are already vulnerable to child marriage and sexual exploitation. And there’s no doubt that the absence of a proper education system for this age group is likely to worsen the situation.

Placed at such a crucial juncture of their lives—when identities are formed and their roles in their community are established—the Rohingya youth is at the threshold of a crisis. As these voices testify, it’s possible that the future of this generation is bleaker that the one before them.