The Guardian view on the forgotten Rohingya refugees: lives without futures | Editorial

More than five years after hundreds of thousands fled Myanmar, conditions in Bangladesh are deteriorating

The hungry and desperate are now much more so. Last month, the rations to Rohingya living in the world’s largest refugee camp – Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh – were slashed. Another drastic cut is due next month. This is, as a UN expert warned, a matter of life and death. The Rohingya have lived on a knife edge for too long.

Their suffering made global headlines in 2017, when the Myanmar military, supported by militias, launched a murderous campaign that took thousands of lives, forced 700,000 to flee Rakhine state for Bangladesh and was described by a UN human rights expert as genocide. In the last two years, what little attention has been paid to Myanmar has focused on the military’s coup and attempts to crush civilian resistance. But the suffering of the Rohingya began decades ago and continues to this day, even outside Rakhine state. Many had fled before, returning (not always by choice) when they were assured it was safe. It was not. They experienced discrimination and repression, military operations, pogroms and the stripping of their citizenship. The 600,000 or so who remain in Myanmar are confined to camps, subject to government violence and denied essential services.

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Afghan girls may be blocked from taking GCSEs as families moved from London

‘Barbaric’ to take away exam chance after all teenage refugees have overcome, headteacher says

Two 16-year-old Afghan refugee girls will not be able to sit their GCSEs because the Home Office is moving them out of London weeks before their exams without guaranteed school places, their “heartbroken” headteacher has told the Observer.

Fulham Cross Girls School, an academy in London, enrolled 15 Afghan girls who were evacuated to the UK when the Taliban took power in 2021. They have been living in bridging accommodation in a hotel for a year and a half, but all the families were notified last week that they would be moved out of London at the end of March.

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Huge fire at Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh leaves thousands homeless – video

A fire tore through a refugee camp for Rohingya Muslims in southern Bangladesh on Sunday, leaving thousands homeless, officials said. The blaze erupted at Camp 11 in Cox’s Bazar, a south-eastern border district where more than 1 million Rohingya refugees live. Most of them fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017

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Huge fire at Rohingya refugee camp leaves thousands without shelter

Fears of future blazes after health, learning and religious facilities also destroyed in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

An estimated 12,000 Rohingya have been left without shelter after a fire tore through part of a cramped refugee camp in southern Bangladesh on Sunday, destroying health centres, learning facilities and mosques.

The fire broke out at Camp 11 of Cox’s Bazar refugee camp, which is home to more than 1 million Rohingya refugees, including 700,000 who fled their home country, Myanmar, after a brutal military crackdown in 2017.

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Pakistan crackdown on Afghan refugees leaves ‘four dead’ and thousands in cells

Asylum seekers in Karachi tell of terror of being sent back to the Taliban and despair at being shackled and held in Pakistani jails

Refugees are reportedly dying in Pakistani prisons, and children are being arrested and tied together with ropes, as a wave of detentions and deportations spreads fearamong the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have crossed the border since the Taliban took power.

According to lawyers representing Afghans in detention, at least four people have died in custody, and thousands more, including children, are being held in prisons as Pakistan hardens its stance against Afghan citizens.

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UN warns of ‘unconscionable’ cuts to Rohingya food rations as donations fall

World Food Programme calls for urgent $125m injection after being forced into axing supplies into Bangladesh refugee camps by 17%

The UN has been forced to cut food rations for Rohingya refugees by 17% and has warned of “unconscionable” further cuts in April as a result of dwindling international donations.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said it needs $125m (£104m) urgently to avoid the further cuts.

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Afghan refugee in London told to give up doctorate and move to Yorkshire

University asks home secretary to intervene in move that would deprive him of scholarship and teaching roles

A Chevening academic will be forced to give up a doctorate, a scholarship and teaching roles under Home Office plans to uproot Afghan refugees from London and move them to hotel rooms in Yorkshire, a university has said.

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has been asked by a senior official at his university to intervene after Ahmad, a PhD student in engineering, and his young family were told to relocate 200 miles away to Wetherby near Leeds.

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Canada votes to take in 10,000 Uyghur refugees amid Chinese pressure to force their return

Move shows ‘what is happening to the Uyghurs is unacceptable’, says MP after non-binding parliamentary ballot with prime minister’s support

Canada’s parliament has unanimously passed a motion to take in 10,000 Uyghur refugees who fled China, but are now facing pressure to return.

The vote on Wednesday builds on a February 2021 move by Canadian lawmakers to label Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in its north-western Xinjiang territory as genocide.

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Sea ‘a graveyard’ as number of Rohingya fleeing Bangladesh by boat soars

UN figures show number of those attempting to escape horrendous conditions in refugee camps increased from 700 in 2021 to over 3,500 in 2022

The number of Rohingya refugees taking dangerous sea journeys in the hope of reaching Malaysia or Indonesia has surged by 360%, the UN has announced after hundreds of refugees were left stranded at the end of last year.

Rohingya in Bangladesh refugee camps have warned that human smugglers have ramped up operations and are constantly searching for people to fill boats from Myanmar and Bangladesh headed for Malaysia, where people believe they can live more freely.

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UK government urged to honour pledge to Afghan refugees’ families

Exclusive: Charities and activists call on PM to follow through on pledge to allow families to resettle in UK

More than 100 charities and activists are calling on the prime minister to facilitate the resettlement of family members of thousands of Afghans who came to the UK under a government scheme.

The government pledged to resettle family members in the UK but at the moment there is no mechanism for them to do this. Campaigners have accused the government of abandoning Afghans in danger who were promised the right to reunite with family members in the UK.

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Rohingya refugees bet lives on boat crossings despite rising death toll

Woman recounts suffering on perilous journeys taken to escape oppression in Myanmar and squalid Bangladesh camps

Hatemon Nesa recalled hugging her young daughter tightly as the cramped, broken-down boat they were sitting on drifted aimlessly. They had set off on 25 November from the squalid Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh, where they had lived since 2017, when a brutal crackdown by Myanmar’s military forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee over the border.

The 27-year-old, like many other Rohingya refugees, was hoping for a better life in Malaysia. But about 10 days into the journey the boat’s engine stopped working and food and water supplies began to run out.

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Activists appeal for rescue of Rohingya refugees stranded at sea in leaking boat

Vessel thought to have embarked from Bangladesh is reportedly near Malaysia with 160 people onboard who have no food or water

Activists have called for urgent assistance to rescue 160 Rohingya refugees, including young children, who they say are stranded at sea on a damaged boat and have been without food or water for days.

The boat, which activists say is near Malaysian waters, is believed to have left on 25 November from Bangladesh, where almost 1 million Rohingya live in squalid and cramped refugee camps.

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‘Destitution is almost inevitable’: Afghan refugees in Greece left homeless by failed system

Catch-22 system leaves people facing eviction upon being granted refugee status – yet unable to claim rent subsidies without accommodation

Mohammad Ashraf Rasooli, 70, looks at his five-year-old granddaughter, sitting on the floor next to him watching cartoons on a phone. They live in a two-bedroom flat in a suburb of Athens. “Even tomorrow, we don’t know what will happen to us,” he says.

The former judge and legal adviser to the Afghan Ministry of Justice, who had a role in putting together the 2004 Afghan constitution, is facing eviction with his family, including his three grandchildren. This is in line with regulations in Greece, which state that once someone has obtained refugee status, they must leave the accommodation provided for them within 30 days.

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‘No darkness is for ever’: can an activist in exile persuade the Taliban to allow teaching on TV?

The regime’s closure of her support and literacy centres for women and girls was crushing, but Jamila Afghani is looking for ways to build a brighter future for the Afghan women she left behind

Jamila Afghani was settling into her new home in Kitchener, Ontario, when she found out that the Taliban had raided her office back in Afghanistan. Uniformed officers had barged into a counselling service for women in Kabul, accused the staff of running “a ministry of women” and taken one of the employees away for questioning.

Afghani had chosen the premises in the capital in part because of its proximity to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, where she had good contacts who supported her work championing the rights of women and girls. When the Taliban replaced the women’s ministry with the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, Afghani’s organisation found itself working under the nose of the morality police.

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World has left Bangladesh to shelter 1m Rohingya refugees alone, says minister

Shahriar Alam criticises international community for doing ‘absolutely nothing’ to press Myanmar’s junta to guarantee a safe return

The world has done “absolutely nothing” to ensure safety in Myanmar for its persecuted Rohingya minority, said Bangladesh’s foreign minister, complaining that his country is sheltering more than 1 million refugees without support.

Foreign minister Shahriar Alam told the Guardian financial support for the Rohingya has decreased each year and there has been no real progress towards repatriation in the five years since more than 700,000 fled massacres by Myanmar’s military. That wave, in August 2017, joined approximately 300,000 people that had already fled Myanmar because of previous security crackdowns.

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