October 7, 2024
By Jihye Jo, S. Korea
Even among Nobel Peace Prize winners, there is someone who has taken a completely different approach to the Rohingya issue. He is none other than Bangladesh’s Dr. Muhammad Yunus, who is well known to us for his ‘Grameen Bank’ project. The Grameen Bank project began in 1983 and has successfully provided small loans to the poor without collateral, helping 60% of the beneficiaries escape absolute poverty. Thanks to this success, more than 100 other developing countries have benchmarked the Grameen Bank and are carrying out projects.
<Increasing number of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh camps – 32,000 newborns every year>
Dr. Muhammad Yunus, who is also the head of the Bangladesh interim government that was launched on August 8, 2024, has recently been taking active steps in the international community to resolve the Rohingya issue. The reason the head of the Bangladesh interim government is taking an active stance on the Rohingya issue is because the refugee camps where 1 million Rohingya live are located in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Every year, 32,000 children are born in the camps, and the number of Rohingya refugees is steadily increasing as they escape attacks by the Myanmar government and Arakan rebels and come to Bangladesh.
<IOM urges resettlement to third countries, discusses with Malaysian Prime Minister>
Amid this situation, Dr. Muhammad Yunus urged concrete actions in a meeting with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to allow Rohingya refugees to quickly resettle to third countries through a fast-track approval process. Also, in the meeting with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on October 4, there was a discussion about the Rohingya issue, which also affects Malaysia.
There are several realistic reasons why the Bangladesh interim government is actively moving to help Rohingya refugees resettle in third countries. The first thing to consider is that the economic situation of Bangladesh, one of the world’s top three food exporters, has not been good recently. The value of the Bangladeshi currency, the taka, has fallen by 30% against the US dollar, Bangladesh’s net foreign exchange reserves have decreased by $20.4 million, and food prices in Bangladesh have been soaring for 12 consecutive years. Not only has the internal situation in Bangladesh worsened, but the United Nations World Food Programme, which oversees food distribution for the Rohingya, has also announced that it will reduce its distribution as funding sources for supporting the Rohingya have decreased.
With the Rohingya people in such a dilemma, it seems that the only way to resolve the Rohingya issue is resettlement in a third country. In 2022, resettlement of the Rohingya people in a third country resumed after 12 years, but it was in 2024 that it really started to accelerate. Although the pace of change is still slow, let’s look at the current situation where Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the head of the Bangladesh interim government, is moving toward a realistic solution to the Rohingya issue, and look forward to a bright future for resolving the Rohingya issue.