Daily Times

On the third anniversary of a mass exodus of Rohingya to Bangladesh, prospects look bleak for about 1 million members of the Muslim minority from Myanmar living in bamboo and plastic shelters in refugee camps.

Two attempts to get a repatriation process going, in 2018 and 2019, failed as the refugees refused to go back to Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and considered outsiders, fearing violence.

Some take the dangerous option of travelling with people-smugglers by boat to Southeast Asia. Scores of people have been killed in recent years as their over-crowded rickety boats have capsized or run out of water and food.

But even that perilous route is getting more difficult now as countries like Malaysia shut their borders, threatening to push boats back out to sea, to protect jobs and resources amid novel coronavirus lockdowns.

Some Rohingya are clinging to the hope of a third option – resettlement in a rich country.

“I just pray and hope that one day my family will be settled in a Western country,” said Mohammed Nur, who lives in a refugee camp in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district neighbouring Myanmar.

Nur was on a short-list for resettlement under an earlier programme.

But Bangladesh, which has for decades given refuge to waves of Rohingya fleeing from Myanmar, ended the resettlement programme in 2010 out of fear it would become a hub for refugees seeking to move to the West.

Nur lives in hope the programme will be revived and has even put off marriage because he worries a bigger family would see him dropped from the list.

“I’m 29 now but still not married as I don’t want to expand my family,” he said.

Whether a resettlement programme gets going or not depends on Bangladesh.

Bangladesh’s refugee commissioner told Reuters the focus was on repatriation but his agency was ready to work to resettle refugees in other countries if his government decided to resume the programme.

Talukder said it was up to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to request the resumption of resettlement, then his government would decide.

“If the government takes the decision, we’re ready to implement it,” the commissioner, Mahbub Alam Talukder, said.

From 2006 to 2010, the programme saw 920 Rohingya resettled in countries such as Australia, Canada and the United States. Bangladesh’s foreign minister and the ministry’s secretary did not respond to requests for comment.