Rohingya refugee camps most unsafe for women

Undoubtedly, spread of education and eradication of poverty are the most effective approaches to empower women and hence reduce early marriage in a society. In a lower and upper middle class family in our society, early marriage is pretty unthinkable. It is certainly not because there is a law preventing it but the education, awareness, progressive economic and career goals that they have envisioned. But Rohingya people have no such opportunities to pursue a progressive life. They live in a setting that coerces them to feel insecure and marry earlier.

Rohingya people have been deprived of their basic rights including education in Myanmar for decades. Now, for the last four years, they have been living miserably in shacks in the camps where violence has been a daily experience, increasingly making them more despondent. There is no strong social protection and formal justice systems, no formal education, no state authority over their head and no solution of their crisis seems ahead. As a result, after long four years, a kind of desperate feeling that anywhere is better than here is growing among them.

Given the limited in-house space and flimsy tents they live in, it is hardly possible to provide separate space for the teenagers and to ensure their privacy. Most shanties are overcrowded. So to the refugees, marriage often looks like something where there is nothing else to be done.

There are thousands of broken, separated, vulnerable women-headed families struggling to survive and feed their children. A number of women are there who were married, had babies and then were carelessly deserted by their husbands. Marriages don’t last long, often stuck in negligence and abuse by husbands and finally end up in separation.

The Rohingya society is highly patriarchal where women empowerment is not encouraged. In many cases, Rohingya men take advantage of women and girl’s powerlessness and helplessness. Life has been so insecure for women and girls in the camps that they sometimes find no choice but to marry someone for simply for security’s sake, even after knowing that the would-be husband already has other wives. Women dare not to speak up against the abuse, in fear that it might lead to further insecurity and violence. To most women and girls in the Rohingya camps, having one abusive husband seems better than being abused by many other men.

In last August, an in-depth report by The New Humanitarian, a Geneva-based independent, nonprofit news agency, reveals that Rohingya women are “being harassed, kidnapped, attacked or extorted by men affiliated with Rohingya militant groups and gangs”. The report quoted a woman saying that “this is happening everywhere, but nobody is talking about it”. It also notes that Rohingya militant groups and criminal gangs compete for control in the camps. They marry or sexually abuse whoever woman and girl they like and leave as they wish.

In late September 2021, Mohib Ullah, a prominent non-violent Rohingya civilian leader was shot dead by a group of Rohingya gunmen at his office in the camps. On 22 October, seven Rohingyas were also killed by an armed group at a madrasa in one of the camps in Balukhali. ARSA, a Rohingya militant group, is alleged to be behind the killing. With this recent deadly violence, the ordinary Rohingyas are feeling more apprehensive and helpless.

Many say there are aid workers, security forces and other officials in the camps in the day-time but at night, the camps are under the control of what they call the “Pahari groups” (the gangs operating from hills nearby). Drug trafficking and taking innocent Rohingyas hostage have been their big business. Abusing women and girls appears to have turned into their addiction.