THE Rohingya crisis is too often treated as a humanitarian emergency to be managed rather than a political injustice to be resolved. Bangladesh has sheltered a vast refugee population for nearly a decade, yet the prospect of safe, voluntary and sustainable return grows more remote. The crisis is rooted in Myanmar’s long struggle over identity, citizenship and equal protection. Any durable solution must secure the Rohingya’s legal status and fundamental rights, not merely move them back across a border.

Myanmar’s military and political elite have long advanced a narrow vision of a Bamar Buddhist state. Ultranationalist movements have intensified hostility towards the Rohingyas in recent decades, helping to legitimise violence, forced displacement and the systematic denial of citizenship. But Myanmar is profoundly multi-ethnic. Many communities, including the Karen and Kachin, have sought recognition, representation, autonomy and protection from military rule. The Rohingya catastrophe is therefore not an isolated dispute; it is part of a wider struggle over who belongs and what kind of state Myanmar will become.

The Rohingya Muslims of Arakan, now Rakhine State, have sought recognition of their identity and rights for generations. Their present condition cannot be separated from the upheavals surrounding independence in the 1940s and the failures of postcolonial state-building. Those unresolved conflicts have helped produce armed organisations, including the Arakan Army and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, as well as many other similar groups. Their goals differ, but their rise reflects a common reality: ethnic rights, territorial control and military power remain violently contested, particularly along Myanmar’s borders.

The Rohingyas are routinely branded as terrorists or dismissed as ‘Bengali infiltrators’. These labels erase their longstanding presence in Rakhine State and ignore centuries of movement across a border that did not always exist in its present form. Such rhetoric is not harmless. It strips a people of legitimacy and provides political cover for exclusion and violence. Meanwhile, conflict among armed groups and chronic lawlessness endanger the Rohingyas inside Myanmar and reverberate through the camps in Cox’s Bazar, where trafficking, intimidation and criminal networks exploit desperation.

In Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char, severe restrictions on movement, education and formal work leave Rohingya families with little agency over their lives. Humanitarian assistance is inadequate and increasingly uncertain. Bangladesh, moreover, does not recognise the Rohingyas as refugees through a comprehensive domestic legal framework, limiting their access to enforceable rights and durable solutions. Keeping nearly a million people dependent, confined and without a credible future is not stability. It is a prolonged emergency whose human and political costs continue to grow.

Camp life is defined by overcrowding, fragile infrastructure and recurring dangers: landslides, monsoon floods, cyclones, fires and disease outbreaks. Armed violence further erodes security, while gaps in health care, sanitation and psychosocial support fall hardest on children, women, older people and persons with disabilities. Host communities are also under strain as jobs, services, land and natural resources come under pressure. Unless international support reaches both refugees and local residents, hardship and perceptions of unequal assistance will deepen resentment and weaken social cohesion.

With education, livelihoods, legal status and safe return all blocked, some Rohingyas risk sea journeys towards Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. They face drowning, trafficking, extortion, detention and exploitation by smugglers. This is how neglect in one country becomes a regional protection crisis. Malaysia, a major destination for the Rohingyas seeking safety and work, is responding to domestic pressures with tougher enforcement, detention and calls for forced repatriation. Its approach exposes ASEAN’s failure to build a credible system for responsibility-sharing, refugee protection and safe disembarkation.

Bangladesh supports repatriation, but three attempts have failed because Myanmar’s military regime has not acted in good faith. No refugee will willingly return without credible guarantees of safety, dignity and rights. China brokered an agreement that emphasised transfer rather than protection, and it collapsed. Beijing wants the crisis contained in part because of its strategic interests and investments in Myanmar. India and other regional powers have likewise declined to apply the sustained pressure required to make return possible. Diplomacy without enforceable rights merely repeats failure.

Past initiatives backed by India and China focused on moving refugees into reception centres or temporary shelters in Myanmar before securing citizenship, freedom of movement, physical safety or access to former communities. That approach confused relocation with repatriation. Earlier efforts failed because the minimum conditions for safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable return did not exist. The Rohingyas had no reason to believe they would receive legal recognition, protection from renewed persecution, access to land and livelihoods or independent oversight after crossing back into Myanmar.

No major regional or global power has sustained the diplomatic pressure needed to change conditions inside Myanmar. Sanctions have signalled condemnation but delivered limited practical effect when applied unevenly and without coordinated political engagement, humanitarian access and pressure from states with real economic leverage. The agenda must also include accountability for genocide, war crimes, forced displacement and systematic violence. Justice is not an optional addition to repatriation. It is essential to rebuilding trust, deterring renewed abuse and showing refugees that return will not expose them to the same machinery of persecution.

The case brought by The Gambia before the International Court of Justice could strengthen recognition of Myanmar’s obligations and advance accountability. But legal proceedings alone will not protect a family in Rakhine State or a child in a camp. Their impact will depend on the Court’s decisions, credible monitoring and implementation, and the willingness of influential governments and international institutions to turn legal findings into sustained diplomatic action. International law matters most when states are prepared to enforce its consequences. That remains to be seen in the Rohingya crisis.

Bangladesh is right to insist that repatriation must be safe, voluntary and dignified, with citizenship, security and fundamental rights fully protected. It has repeatedly carried that position to the United Nations, most recently through the prime minister of Bangladesh. Yet the country now bears an enormous social, economic, environmental and security burden, especially in Cox’s Bazar and surrounding communities. Declining and unpredictable international assistance has intensified frustration. Responsibility-sharing cannot remain a slogan delivered at donor conferences; regional and global partners must provide reliable financing and use their political influence to address the crisis at its source.

The solution, however, ultimately lies with Myanmar. Its authorities must confront the causes of displacement, restore citizenship and legal protection, guarantee freedom of movement and physical security and permit the Rohingyas to rebuild their lives. At the same time, fighting between the military and increasingly influential armed non-state actors in Rakhine State and along the Bangladesh–Myanmar border must be addressed through a credible political process. Civilian safeguards, humanitarian access and meaningful international monitoring are indispensable. Without them, promises of return are not policy; they are pressure applied to people with nowhere safe to go.

Any policy that forces Rohingya refugees back into danger deserves unequivocal condemnation. Malaysia’s recent move towards forced repatriation, driven by domestic political pressure and public discontent, cannot erase the rights of these vulnerable, stateless people. Forced repatriation sets a dangerous regional precedent, encouraging other host countries to send refugees back before conditions are safe, dignified and sustainable. Forced repatriation is neither safe nor viable. Malaysia’s forced repatriation will not resolve the crisis; it simply redistributes suffering. Myanmar remains in active conflict, including with Rohingya people both within and outside the country.

Optimism about voluntary repatriation is impossible unless the Rohingyas can return with citizenship, legal status and fundamental rights guaranteed. Refugee crises worldwide show that return fails when security, livelihoods, services and safeguards against renewed persecution are absent. Myanmar carries the primary responsibility, but the international community must apply coordinated pressure for reform and accountability while sustaining aid to refugees and host communities. The choice is not between endless camps and reckless return. It is between managing injustice indefinitely and building the political conditions that can finally end it.

Until those conditions exist, Bangladesh needs greater and more predictable aid for both Rohingya refugees and the communities carrying the crisis’s social, economic and environmental costs. UNHCR and its partners should expand education, skills training, livelihoods, healthcare and protection services so that a generation is not lost to confinement and dependency. Neglect has predictable consequences: more people will attempt dangerous journeys in search of safety and opportunity and more will fall prey to traffickers, smugglers and exploitative labour markets.

The Rohingya diaspora across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia is evidence of decades of persecution, not a substitute for justice. Many remain without secure legal status or any durable solution. Unless Myanmar changes and the international community protects those displaced in the meantime, onward migration will continue. Repatriation must never become a polite word for abandonment. A safe return begins not at the border, but with citizenship, accountability and the credible promise that the Rohingyas can finally live as equal members of their own country.

Dr Mohammad Zaman is a development and resettlement specialist. He is editor, with co-editors Robert Anderson and Kawser Ahmed, of ‘The Rohingya Stories: History and Geopolitics in a Multipolar World’.