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Rights Group: Bangladesh Blocking Rohingya Refugee Education

Zsombor Peter

   KUALA LUMPUR - Bangladesh is risking a "lost generation" by blocking
   international efforts to improve on the meager education available to
   hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees, Human Rights Watch (HRW)
   says in a new report.

   "Are We Not Human?" -- released Tuesday, warns that the policy
   affecting some 400,000 children could backfire on Bangladesh by making
   the refugees all the more reliant on aid and vulnerable to criminal
   gangs.

   More than 1 million ethnic Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh from
   neighboring Myanmar, where they have faced decades of persecution. Most
   of them arrived in late 2017, when Myanmar's security forces allegedly
   unleashed a campaign of arson, rape and murder on Rohingya communities
   across northern Rakhine state.

   Bangladesh has earned praise for taking them in.

   But by barring the children from local public schools and refusing to
   let charities teach certified curricula inside the refugee camps, HRW
   says, Bangladesh has left them with little more than ad hoc classes in
   ramshackle facilities often taught by unqualified instructors. Without
   accredited coursework, they won't be able to use what little they do
   learn to transition into a proper school system if and when they leave.
   
   Bill Van Esveld, HRW's associate children's rights director, said the
   policy amounted to "human rights abuse on a massive scale" by raising
   the odds that the refugees will fall victim to criminals or turn to
   crime.

   "Rohingya people have said this to me: If the kids have no access to a
   better future, if they have no access to education, what are the
   alternatives? Despair, which leads to being prey to human trafficking
   ...criminality, and being prey to radicalization," he told VOA. "The
   less you know, the easier prey you are to people who want to exploit
   you."

   HRW says the policy also flouts Bangladesh's obligations to provide
   refugees with quality and inclusive education under the U.N. treaties
   it has signed, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and
   the Global Compact on Refugees.

   The office of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina referred all
   questions to her press secretary, Ihsanul Karim, who was out of the
   country and did not reply to multiple requests for an interview.

   Officially, the government is operating under the assumption that the
   refugees will be heading back to Myanmar soon; but, more than two years
   after the last mass exodus, the U.N. says Myanmar is still too risky
   for the Rohingya. The refugees themselves have rejected offers to
   return to a country they call home but mostly continues to deny them
   citizenship. The prospects of an imminent return look remote at best.

   Van Esveld said Bangladesh was also acting under the fear that the
   refugees were taking low-wage jobs from locals and driving up crime.

   "That's common in every country I've worked on, and not always related
   to fact," he said of the stigma that often sticks to refugees. "But the
   other thing is that denying kids an education really helps to make this
   a self-fulfilling prophecy...Deprive a whole generation of kids of
   access to education and, you know, you are going to certainly make that
   stigma worse."
   

References

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