Bangladesh is holding a two-day conference in Cox’s Bazar on the persecuted Rohingya community before a high-level conference on the Rohingya refugee crisis in September on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
The meeting, organised by Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, comes eight years after more than a million Rohingya, many of whom are now stateless, were forced to flee Myanmar and take shelter in Bangladesh. They fled a Myanmar military crackdown that killed thousands of Rohingya and has been described as a war crime and genocide.
“Since 2017, Rohingyas have had no direct dialogue with international bodies, the Bangladeshi government, local communities or Myanmar,” said Kamal Hossain, chairman of the Forcefully Displaced Myanmar National Representative Committee, a Rohingya advocacy group. “This conference is seen as a step toward solutions.”
Who is attending?
Khalilur Rahman, high representative for the Rohingya issue and national security adviser of Bangladesh, opened the conference on Sunday.
Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus, leader of Bangladesh’s interim government, is expected to attend the meeting, aimed at helping one of the world’s most marginalised groups of people.
Other delegates will include foreign ministers, international envoys, UN agency representatives and officials from Bangladesh’s overseas missions.
A delegation led by Rahman will also visit the Rohingya refugee camps – the largest in the world – to speak to the residents, who have increasingly been facing shortages of food and medicine.
The conference is being held as the Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar have been impacted by aid cuts as most of the 1.5 million people rely on handouts.
“Since the beginning of this year, food rations have been cut from $12 a month to $8 a month to $6 a month, basically half, and at that level, they can’t afford any fish, chicken. It’s basically just pulses and rice,” Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng said, reporting from Cox’s Bazar.
He said Yunus has called for the conference so Rohingya are “not forgotten”.
“He hopes that they will, over the course of the next couple of days, find some real solutions to what happens to the Rohingya, and they [the Rohingya] don’t remain here in these camps forgotten to the rest of the world,” Cheng said.
What’s the significance of the conference?
For Nay San Lwin, cochairman of the Arakan Rohingya National Council, “this is the first time in eight years that the Rohingya will have the opportunity to be heard.”
“The significance of this conference is that the voices expressed here will be carried forward to the UN High-Level Conference on the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities, which will take place in New York on September 30,” he said.
Nay San Lwin also told Al Jazeera: “There will possibly be another one [UN meeting] in Qatar in December. Since these meetings are being held at a very high level, we hope they will at least result in a resolution for the Rohingya.”
“I believe these processes can lead toward a permanent solution for the Rohingya,” he added. “Our ultimate goal remains to return to our homeland in Myanmar with full rights, dignity and protection.”
What has the UN said about the Rohingya recently?
Before Sunday and Monday’s meeting, the UN called for citizenship, equality and security for Myanmar’s Rohingya minority.
The mostly Muslim Rohingya have been persecuted in Myanmar for decades. Of the estimated 3.5 million Rohingya worldwide, it is estimated 90 percent live as refugees and undocumented migrants.
“As we near the passing of another year with no justice for the violence which started on August 25, 2017, in Myanmar, we are left to ask the question of when the enduring misery for these and ongoing crimes will end, particularly for the long-suffering Rohingya community,” UN human rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence said.
“Ending impunity and ensuring the Rohingya’s rights to security, citizenship and equality are essential for breaking the cycle of violence,” he said at a news briefing in Geneva.
Has the situation changed recently?
Laurence said the human rights and humanitarian situation in Myanmar’s Rakhine State has sharply deteriorated since November 2023, deepening the life-threatening conditions faced by the Rohingya still living there.
The impoverished state – a slice of coastal Myanmar bordering Bangladesh – witnessed intense suffering during the latest conflict in Myanmar, triggered by a 2021 coup that deposed a democratically elected government and put another repressive military administration in power.
Both the military and local ethnic fighters from the Arakan Army “have committed and continue to commit serious atrocity crimes against the Rohingya with impunity… in flagrant violation of international law,” Laurence said.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk is calling for the international community to step up support for the Rohingya, Laurence added.
But Fatema Khatoon – who fled Myanmar three times because of military crackdowns in 1978, 1992 and again in 2018 – is not sure of the conference’s outcome.
“I want to go home with justice, to get back my land and property. I want to see peace there. It’s been eight years since I came here for the third time. How much longer must we suffer?” she told Al Jazeera.
Successive aid cuts have already caused severe hardship among Rohingya in the overcrowded settlements, where many rely on aid and suffer from rampant malnutrition.
Are there more conferences proposed?
Yes, the president of the UN General Assembly has set September 30 as the date of a conference in New York.
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