THE | DIPLOMAT
By Sebastian Strangio
October 02, 2025
By Sebastian Strangio
October 02, 2025
A safe and voluntary repatriation of refugees to Rakhine State remains unlikely for the foreseeable future. Is it time for a new approach?
Rohingya rights advocate Wai Wai Nu addresses the High-Level Conference on the Situation of Rohingya Muslims and Other Minorities at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Sept. 30, 2025. Credit: X/Wai Wai Nu
On Tuesday, top U.N. and government officials warned of the critical situation facing Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar, due to funding shortfalls and the unstable political conditions inside Myanmar.
The High-Level Conference on the Situation of Rohingya Muslims and Other Minorities in Myanmar was convened at the United Nations General Assembly in New York to mobilize global support for Rohingya refugees and formulate a coordinated plan for the resolution of their return to Myanmar’s Rakhine State.
The High-Level Conference on the Situation of Rohingya Muslims and Other Minorities in Myanmar was convened at the United Nations General Assembly in New York to mobilize global support for Rohingya refugees and formulate a coordinated plan for the resolution of their return to Myanmar’s Rakhine State.
Bangladesh is currently sheltering more than 1.2 million Rohingya, the majority of whom fled a military “clearance operation” launched by the Myanmar military in August 2017.
Speakers at the conference highlighted the dire situation facing these civilians, and those Rohingya remaining inside Myanmar’s Rakhine State. In a livestreamed speech to the U.N. General Assembly hall, where the conference took place, Maung Sawyeddollah, the founder of the Rohingya Student Network, took the world to task for its inaction on the multiple crises facing his people.
“This message is for the world leaders and the United Nations: It has already been more than eight years since the Rohingya genocide was exposed,” he said. “Where is justice for the Rohingya? Where?”
Key speaker Julie Bishop, the U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy on Myanmar, argued that a sustainable solution to the refugee crisis sat downstream from a resolution of the political and humanitarian crisis that has enveloped Myanmar since the military coup of February 2021. She lamented the fact that the return of displaced Rohingya remains a distant prospect due to the conditions inside Rakhine State, which is still being contested by the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army (AA).
Speakers at the conference highlighted the dire situation facing these civilians, and those Rohingya remaining inside Myanmar’s Rakhine State. In a livestreamed speech to the U.N. General Assembly hall, where the conference took place, Maung Sawyeddollah, the founder of the Rohingya Student Network, took the world to task for its inaction on the multiple crises facing his people.
“This message is for the world leaders and the United Nations: It has already been more than eight years since the Rohingya genocide was exposed,” he said. “Where is justice for the Rohingya? Where?”
Key speaker Julie Bishop, the U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy on Myanmar, argued that a sustainable solution to the refugee crisis sat downstream from a resolution of the political and humanitarian crisis that has enveloped Myanmar since the military coup of February 2021. She lamented the fact that the return of displaced Rohingya remains a distant prospect due to the conditions inside Rakhine State, which is still being contested by the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army (AA).
“The worsening conflict poses a seemingly insurmountable barrier to their return,” Bishop told the conference, which was attended by member states, U.N. agencies, civil society groups, and other regional stakeholders. She said more than four years after the 2021 coup, there is still “no agreed ceasefire, no agreed pathway to peace, no agreed political solution.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in remarks delivered on his behalf by Chef de Cabinet Courtenay Rattray, said similarly that “conditions in Myanmar’s Rakhine State impede the possibility of [Rohingya refugees’] safe, voluntary, dignified, and sustainable return.” He described the Rohingya refugee crisis as a “deepening tragedy.”
The High-Level Conference comes amid growing pressure from the Bangladeshi government for the world to commit to a plan for the resolution of the Rohingya refugee crisis. In a speech to the UNGA last week, the country’s interim leader, Mohammad Yunus, warned of a severe worsening of the Rohingya refugee crisis due to sharp reductions in international funding to the camps inside Bangladesh, urging immediate global action to prevent “a catastrophic situation.”
In a speech to Tuesday’s conference, he described Bangladesh as “a victim of the crisis. We are forced to bear huge financial, social and environmental costs. As funding declines, the only peaceful option is to begin [refugees’] repatriation.”
However, as the above comments suggest, the chance of a peaceful return remains extremely remote at the present juncture, due to a concatenation of factors. The first is conflict. Since late 2023, Rakhine has seen heated battles between the Myanmar army and the AA, a Rakhine nationalist armed group that now controls 14 of Rakhine State’s 17 township centers.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in remarks delivered on his behalf by Chef de Cabinet Courtenay Rattray, said similarly that “conditions in Myanmar’s Rakhine State impede the possibility of [Rohingya refugees’] safe, voluntary, dignified, and sustainable return.” He described the Rohingya refugee crisis as a “deepening tragedy.”
The High-Level Conference comes amid growing pressure from the Bangladeshi government for the world to commit to a plan for the resolution of the Rohingya refugee crisis. In a speech to the UNGA last week, the country’s interim leader, Mohammad Yunus, warned of a severe worsening of the Rohingya refugee crisis due to sharp reductions in international funding to the camps inside Bangladesh, urging immediate global action to prevent “a catastrophic situation.”
In a speech to Tuesday’s conference, he described Bangladesh as “a victim of the crisis. We are forced to bear huge financial, social and environmental costs. As funding declines, the only peaceful option is to begin [refugees’] repatriation.”
However, as the above comments suggest, the chance of a peaceful return remains extremely remote at the present juncture, due to a concatenation of factors. The first is conflict. Since late 2023, Rakhine has seen heated battles between the Myanmar army and the AA, a Rakhine nationalist armed group that now controls 14 of Rakhine State’s 17 township centers.
The AA’s ongoing conflict with the Myanmar military has prompted it to blockade important roads both within Rakhine and between it and neighboring states, closing off vital trade routes. In August, the World Food Programme reported that in central Rakhine, the number of families not able to meet basic food needs had risen to 57 percent, up from 33 percent in December 2024. It said that the situation in the northern part of the state, from which most Rohingya hail, was likely much worse “due to active conflict and access issues.”
The second serious factor is the policy of the AA, which has been accused of persecuting Rohingya still living in Rakhine State, and even committing war crimes against Rohingya populations. While the AA has denied these allegations, saying that it has merely taken action to root out Rohingya militant groups allied with the Myanmar army, the mobilization of Buddhist Rakhine identity politics in western Myanmar does not bode well for the peaceful and sustainable reabsorption of more than 1 million refugees. This week, the rights group Amnesty International argued that the AA “has, to many Rohingya, replaced the Myanmar military as their oppressor.”
Indeed, far from providing the conditions for a safe, voluntary return of Rohingya refugees to their homelands, increasing numbers of Rohingya – 150,000 over the past year, by one estimate – are moving in the opposite direction, swelling further the refugee camps in Bangladesh. As Reuters reported this week, citing the International Rescue Committee, “many newly arrived Rohingya refugees are suffering from acute malnutrition, especially children and pregnant and lactating women.”
In a statement released on Monday, a day ahead of the meeting in New York, the rights group Amnesty International warned that attempting to speed up repatriations in such circumstances could have dire unintended consequences.
“Existing conditions in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State are nowhere near ready for Rohingya to return safely,” Amnesty’s Myanmar Researcher Joe Freeman said in the statement. “Any attempt to push ahead with repatriation without addressing the acute dangers facing all communities – Rohingya, Rakhine and other ethnic minorities in Bangladesh and in Myanmar – could be catastrophic.”
This raises the question of whether the “dignified and sustainable return” of refugees to Rakhine State should continue to be viewed as “the primary solution to the crisis,” as the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR described it in 2023. The alternative – a policy of attempting to resettle in third countries the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh – would likely be opposed by Rohingya rights activists, but may well be unavoidable in the longer term.
This sense of hopelessness and drift was evident in some of the comments made at Tuesday’s conference. Guterres pointed out that the solution to the Rohingya crisis “lies ultimately in Myanmar. It lies in ending persecution and discrimination, ensuring accountability, and restoring and upholding rights.” The Rohingya advocate Wai Wai Nu similarly called for “ending impunity, immediate action to protect the #Rohingya, advancing justice, & addressing root causes for lasting solutions,” according to a post on X.
All of these are salutary recommendations. But how attainable are they, in either the short or medium term? For the outside world to hitch its hopes to such a transformation, which would require a considerable international intervention in Myanmar’s affairs, if not the full resolution of the structural political challenges that have bedeviled Myanmar since its independence in 1948, is a recipe for indefinite delays – and growing desperation in the camps around Cox’s Bazar.
During the conference, the United States and Britain announced that they would provide $96 million in further assistance to support the refugees currently in Bangladesh. While this welcome injection will help alleviate the significant funding shortfalls that have contributed to the current sense of urgency, it will be only a temporary salve to a crisis that appears to be approaching a tipping point.
The second serious factor is the policy of the AA, which has been accused of persecuting Rohingya still living in Rakhine State, and even committing war crimes against Rohingya populations. While the AA has denied these allegations, saying that it has merely taken action to root out Rohingya militant groups allied with the Myanmar army, the mobilization of Buddhist Rakhine identity politics in western Myanmar does not bode well for the peaceful and sustainable reabsorption of more than 1 million refugees. This week, the rights group Amnesty International argued that the AA “has, to many Rohingya, replaced the Myanmar military as their oppressor.”
Indeed, far from providing the conditions for a safe, voluntary return of Rohingya refugees to their homelands, increasing numbers of Rohingya – 150,000 over the past year, by one estimate – are moving in the opposite direction, swelling further the refugee camps in Bangladesh. As Reuters reported this week, citing the International Rescue Committee, “many newly arrived Rohingya refugees are suffering from acute malnutrition, especially children and pregnant and lactating women.”
In a statement released on Monday, a day ahead of the meeting in New York, the rights group Amnesty International warned that attempting to speed up repatriations in such circumstances could have dire unintended consequences.
“Existing conditions in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State are nowhere near ready for Rohingya to return safely,” Amnesty’s Myanmar Researcher Joe Freeman said in the statement. “Any attempt to push ahead with repatriation without addressing the acute dangers facing all communities – Rohingya, Rakhine and other ethnic minorities in Bangladesh and in Myanmar – could be catastrophic.”
This raises the question of whether the “dignified and sustainable return” of refugees to Rakhine State should continue to be viewed as “the primary solution to the crisis,” as the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR described it in 2023. The alternative – a policy of attempting to resettle in third countries the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh – would likely be opposed by Rohingya rights activists, but may well be unavoidable in the longer term.
This sense of hopelessness and drift was evident in some of the comments made at Tuesday’s conference. Guterres pointed out that the solution to the Rohingya crisis “lies ultimately in Myanmar. It lies in ending persecution and discrimination, ensuring accountability, and restoring and upholding rights.” The Rohingya advocate Wai Wai Nu similarly called for “ending impunity, immediate action to protect the #Rohingya, advancing justice, & addressing root causes for lasting solutions,” according to a post on X.
All of these are salutary recommendations. But how attainable are they, in either the short or medium term? For the outside world to hitch its hopes to such a transformation, which would require a considerable international intervention in Myanmar’s affairs, if not the full resolution of the structural political challenges that have bedeviled Myanmar since its independence in 1948, is a recipe for indefinite delays – and growing desperation in the camps around Cox’s Bazar.
During the conference, the United States and Britain announced that they would provide $96 million in further assistance to support the refugees currently in Bangladesh. While this welcome injection will help alleviate the significant funding shortfalls that have contributed to the current sense of urgency, it will be only a temporary salve to a crisis that appears to be approaching a tipping point.
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