MORE than half a million children out of an estimated 1.2 million Rohingyas now living in 33 camps in Cox鈥檚 Bazar and on Bhasan Char are reported to be passing their days disappointed, with almost no future to look forward to. Many of them born into the limbo after the 2017 exodus, when a huge number of Rohingyas started fleeing Myanmar military violence, do not have any past in Rakhine to fall back on. Most of the Rohingyas have no legal identity or citizenship in Myanmar. While this state of being stateless remains a concern and the Rohingyas in Bangladesh camps are provided bare minimum services, children are faced with inadequate educational and recreational opportunities and risks related to exploitation and violence. Heavy monsoon and cyclones also expose them to substantial risks. In the camps in Cox鈥檚 Bazar, keeping to United Nations Children鈥檚 Fund data, there are 3,565 learning centres 鈥� 3,056 supported by the UN agency and 3,056 supported by education-sector partners 鈥� in addition to 31 cross-sectoral shared spaces used for education and 2,233 community-based learning facilities. UNICEF says that it can provide formal education and alternative learning, based on the Myanmar curriculum, roughly to 260,000 children.
This appears inadequate as about a half of the Rohingya children living in shelters in Bangladesh are left out of education. UNICEF says that it is trying to ensure that children should have the desired level of learning and skills. But UNICEF data also show that many children, especially in the 3鈥�5 and 15鈥�18 age groups, are still out of school. With no scope for further learning, Rohingya children can now complete education up to Class X. UNICEF says that it would offer education of Class XI in the 2024鈥�25 academic year and of Class XII the next academic year. It is feared, in such a situation, that many children of school-going age having been left out of school could be drawn into violence. Some of them say that they live in constant fear as they have seen people often being kidnapped or killed. Sixty-four Rohingyas, keeping to Rapid Action Battalion data, were killed in camps in 2023 and 20 were killed until the first week of June in 2024. No open spaces for them to play outdoors has compounded the problem. Most of the Rohingyas worry about the future of their children as such a situation has forced many Rohingyas to resort to counselling in hospitals running inside the camps. A psychologist working in a clinic that the UN Refugee Agency and Gonoshasthaya Kendra runs in a camp says that five to seven Rohingyas visit the clinic for counselling on an average every day. With the world attention rapidly shifting from one crisis to another and the global focus on the Rohingya crisis fading away, there is hardly any end in sight to the problem.
While Bangladesh should, therefore, arrange for more recreational facilities and widen education coverage for a sustainable future for the Rohingya children, the authorities must step up efforts on world and regional forums to resolve the crisis.
