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November 12, 2024
By Jihye Jo, South Korea
<The Unstable Educational Status of Rohingya Refugee Children and Adolescents
A considerable amount of time has passed since the publication of the report on the education status of Rohingya refugee children, <Our Crisis is Not Natural> by RHRC in 2022. This report vividly depicts the situation of refugee children who do not receive proper education, even though children account for more than half of the total population of Rohingya refugee camps (52% of the 975,350 Rohingya refugees as of January 2024).
In 2017, when a large number of Rohingya refugees arrived, education was not provided at all, and it was not until 2019 that education became possible in the camps. However, the fact that Myanmar curriculum can only be received at the elementary and middle school level, that academic credentials are not certified, that experienced teachers prefer to work at NGOs that pay better, making it difficult to secure quality teachers, and that students who want to study at a high school level must attend private education centers clearly show the problems of the education system in refugee camps that are still ongoing.
<Maung Sawyeddollah, a Rohingya refugee youth who was accepted to New York University>
However, there has been some hopeful news recently that shows that refugees are not passively waiting for help. It is the news of Maung Sawyeddollah, the first Rohingya refugee to be accepted to New York University. His acceptance news gives great hope to Rohingya youth that ‘I can do it too.’ How could a refugee youth with nothing and an uncertain legal status leave for New York, USA?
His acceptance to New York University was not pure luck, but the result of painstaking effort. Before being accepted to New York University, he had previously been accepted to a Bangladeshi university, but he was rejected after revealing that he was Rohingya. So in his acceptance story, he mentioned that in order to ultimately achieve success, he needed resilience to get back up after failure and determination to achieve results.
<A Lucky Person Who Works Hard, Not Lucky>
In 2019, he created an NGO called “the Rohingya Student Network” in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Then, he began to speak out about the right to education for Rohingya students. In 2012, the Myanmar military government restricted the right of Rohingya students to higher education, and the Bangladesh government also restricted the right of Rohingya refugee students to higher education. He decided that he needed to speak out to the world to change this. So he created his own NGO and began sending letters to Bangladeshi government authorities, human rights organizations, and educational institutions urging Rohingya students to have their right to higher education. Also, I have been publishing articles voluntarily since 2019.
Such consistent efforts have led to international awards. I was selected as a finalist for the 2023 Kofi Annan Next Generation Democracy Award, was selected as a winner of the 2023 Youth Activist Summit, and was selected as a key case for the Amnesty International ‘Write for Right’ campaign.
He has also worked hard to obtain higher education on a personal level. Based on his previous experience of being rejected by a Bangladeshi university, he decided that he had to go to a university abroad, so he applied online to 147 universities around the world, and received acceptance notices from several of them, one of which was New York University.
In addition to being accepted, securing a scholarship was also an important issue. Fortunately, the project he had been working on was well-received, so he was able to secure a scholarship, and even though he did not even have a passport, he received a student visa from the US government. The process of obtaining a student visa was not easy either. He applied for a visa at the US embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh, but was told that he needed to get his identity verified first. So he requested the Bangladesh Ministry of Foreign Affairs to issue a certificate of identity, and after a Bangladeshi Ministry of Foreign Affairs employee came to the refugee camp to investigate, the certificate of identity was issued, and he was able to apply for a student visa at the US embassy without any problems.
<Every country needs a role model who can make them think that they can do it too>
And after years of long challenges on their own, he was able to enter the US with a student visa and refugee card, and become the first Rohingya student at New York University. As I was writing this, I remembered an interview I read a few years ago with Thai professional golfer Moriya Jutanugarn. He was the first Thai to win an international golf tournament. In the interview, she said,
“Personally, I think every country needs a role model – someone to win a tournament or reach the world number one ranking for the first time; someone the players can look up to and show them that it can be done. Se Ri Pak of South Korea joined the LPGA in 1998 when she was the only one from her country 0 fast forward 10 years and there are now 45 players from South Korea on the LPGA tour. ”
The Rohingya refugee who became the first student at NYU has become the first role model for Rohingya students who dream of studying abroad. I hope that more Rohingya refugee students will study in New York, London, Berlin, Seoul, Beijing, Tokyo, and all over the world.
Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, takes a realistic approach to resolving the Rohingya issue
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.