Eight years after nearly 1 million Rohingya fled Myanmar to escape mass killings, rape and arson, the world seems to be abandoning them to an even quieter catastrophe: the collapse of their children’s education. In Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar camps, international aid cuts have forced the closure of more than 4,500 learning centers. More than 227,000 Rohingya children are now locked out of classrooms, with some 1,200 teachers displaced.
The effects have been immediate and devastating. Child marriage, child labor and human trafficking are all on the rise. A generation of young Rohingya is being deprived not only of literacy and numeracy, but of the very tools they need to rebuild their shattered community. In the absence of schooling, children are being pushed into lives of exploitation, desperation and even potential radicalization.
For years, international donors insisted that humanitarian aid to the Rohingya was unsustainable without local solutions. Yet the one area where donors could have made the greatest difference, investing in education, has now been allowed to collapse. This is not just a humanitarian failure, it is a long-term security threat for the region and the wider world.
Bangladesh deserves recognition for opening its borders to the Rohingya when few others would. But its hospitality has been conditional. For political reasons, the government long resisted formal education for refugee children, fearing that such integration would encourage permanent settlement. International agencies responded by creating informal learning centers in the camps, offering basic lessons in English, Burmese and mathematics.
These were never a substitute for a proper education system but they were a lifeline. They gave Rohingya parents hope that their children might one day have futures beyond the bamboo shacks of Kutupalong. Now even that has been taken away.
The closures are not simply the result of Bangladeshi policy. They reflect a broader withdrawal of international support. Donor fatigue has set in. With wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan competing for attention and resources, funding for the Rohingya response has fallen to historic lows. The World Food Programme has already slashed food rations to dangerously inadequate levels. Now, the educational lifeline has been severed too.
The consequences of this neglect are already visible. Aid groups report a surge in underage marriages, as parents marry off daughters to reduce household burdens. Boys are being sent to work in nearby towns, often illegally and in exploitative conditions. Worse still, criminal networks are exploiting the vacuum. Traffickers promise opportunities abroad, only to deliver children into forced labor or sexual slavery.
Such outcomes are not only morally abhorrent, they are strategically shortsighted. History shows that disenfranchised, uneducated populations are fertile ground for instability. Children denied schooling today could become easy recruits for armed groups tomorrow. The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, a small but dangerous militant outfit, has already preyed on despair in the camps. Without urgent intervention, the cycle of exploitation and radicalization could intensify.
The Rohingya crisis was never solely Bangladesh’s burden to bear. The genocide that drove them from Myanmar was recognized by the UN and in 2022 by the US. Justice mechanisms are ongoing in The Hague. But recognition without sustained responsibility is meaningless.
If the international community abandons Rohingya children to illiteracy and exploitation, it will have compounded the original crime with a new one: condemning a people to extinction not through bullets and fire but through neglect and despair.
Education is not a luxury. It is a right enshrined in international law and a prerequisite for any meaningful return to Myanmar. If the Rohingya are ever to go back with dignity, they must do so with the skills and knowledge to rebuild their society. Denying education today is to deny the possibility of return tomorrow.
The window is closing. Once a generation grows up without education, the damage cannot be undone
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
First, donors must restore funding for education in the camps. This requires more than token gestures. The international community spends billions each month on weapons and wars, surely it can spare a fraction to prevent an entire generation from being lost.
Second, Bangladesh should be encouraged, through incentives as well as diplomacy, to allow a more formalized, accredited system of schooling for Rohingya children. This would benefit Bangladesh as well, reducing social problems in the camps and preparing the community for eventual repatriation.
Third, the UN and regional powers must recognize education as central to stability in the Bay of Bengal. Just as food security prevents malnutrition and disease, education prevents the spread of violence and hopelessness. It is preventive security in its purest form.
Finally, civil society and faith groups around the world must keep the Rohingya on the global agenda. The eighth anniversary of the Rohingya exodus has just passed, marked by protests and rallies in the camps. But anniversaries mean little if they do not spur action. The children chanting for freedom at Kutupalong last week deserve more than sympathy — they deserve classrooms, books and teachers.
There is still time to avert disaster. But the window is closing. Once a generation grows up without education, the damage cannot be undone. We will have condemned nearly a quarter of a million children to futures of poverty, exploitation and exclusion.
The genocide in Myanmar sought to erase the Rohingya identity through violence. The collapse of education in Bangladesh threatens to erase it through neglect. The world must not allow either outcome to prevail.
For the sake of justice, stability and simple human decency, we must act now to save the Rohingya’s children from becoming a lost generation.
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is the director of special initiatives at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington, DC. X: @AzeemIbrahim
