Nine Years Later, Rohingya Refugees Are Still Waiting to Go Home
Hundreds of Rohingya refugees gathered at Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on August 24, 2026. They were demanding justice and the right to return home, on the ninth anniversary of the violence that drove them out of Myanmar in 2017 (Al Jazeera). As of July 2026, close to 1.2 million Rohingya refugees remain in Bangladesh, according to the UN. Most live in two large camps called Kutupalong and Nayapara. The protests come as international aid has shrunk, hunger has worsened, and life for Rohingya communities across South and Southeast Asia has become more dangerous.
To understand why these refugees are still in Bangladesh, it helps to know a bit of history. The Rohingya are a Muslim minority from Myanmar's Rakhine state (called Arakan until 1989). Myanmar's government does not recognize them as citizens. Under a law passed in 1982, they were stripped of citizenship, leaving them stateless — meaning no country in the world officially recognizes them as its own people. Myanmar's government calls them undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh and left them out of the 2014 national census.
The Myanmar military has carried out crackdowns against the Rohingya in Rakhine since the 1970s. But the operation in August 2017 was different in scale. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled across the border into Bangladesh in just a few weeks. Human Rights Watch documented the destruction of at least 200 Rohingya villages and estimated 13,000 people were killed. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported at least 6,700 deaths in the first month alone, including more than 700 children under five.
Both UN officials and former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in 2022, formally called the Rohingya crisis a genocide. Genocide, under international law, means acts intended to destroy a group of people based on their identity. The 2017 violence is the subject of an ongoing case at the International Court of Justice (the UN's highest court), filed by The Gambia in 2019. Inside Myanmar, about 120,000 Rohingya were displaced within the country as of 2021, and nearly all Rohingya still there live in Rakhine.
Myanmar's politics have made things harder. After five decades of military rule, Aung San Suu Kyi's party won a landslide election in 2015. But in February 2021, the military seized power again in a coup (a sudden, illegal takeover of the government). This triggered mass protests that grew into an armed uprising. With Myanmar's central authority collapsed, any plan to negotiate the refugees' return has become effectively unworkable. The refugee population in Bangladesh remains stuck.
The system keeping these camps running is under serious strain. Food vouchers for Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar were cut from $12 to $10 per person per month in March, then reduced again to $8 in June. That works out to about 27 cents per day (UNHCR). The World Food Programme said the first cut was driven by a $125 million funding shortfall (WFP). UNHCR also cut its volunteer workforce in the camps by about 40 percent over a year due to budget reductions (UNHCR). Aid agencies say one in three refugees is expected to face crisis-level hunger.
WFP partially restored rations starting June 1, 2024, with a goal of reaching full rations by August (WFP). In April 2026, WFP introduced a new approach that prioritizes the most vulnerable, intended to keep aid flowing through November 2026 (WFP). In June 2026, the United Nations urged the international community not to forget Rohingya refugees as aid cuts threatened vital support (UN News). By April 2026, more than 1,000 Rohingya refugees had reportedly died in the Cox's Bazar camps (WION).
The situation in the surrounding region has worsened too. Since May 2025, Indian authorities have expelled scores of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh and Myanmar without legal protections, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). In Malaysia, hostile content on social media has fueled anti-Rohingya sentiment, raising concerns about the safety of refugee communities there (France 24).
The broader context here is that what started as a displacement problem between two countries — Myanmar and Bangladesh — has grown into a problem involving multiple nations, with no political solution in sight. The genocide case at the international court moves slowly. Myanmar remains in civil war. And the countries and donors that funded the world's largest refugee camp network are giving less. The new food aid approach may help through late 2026, but it does not solve the underlying problems: the Rohingya have no citizenship, no clear path home, and few options for resettlement in other countries. They are caught between a Myanmar government that denies they exist, a Bangladesh host system under financial stress, and neighboring countries increasingly inclined to shut them out. Nine years after the exodus, the demand at the protest is unchanged: justice and a right to return. The political conditions for either are simply not there.
