On 25 August, Bangladesh will mark nine years since more than 700,000 Rohingyas fled across the border from Myanmar's Rakhine State, joining earlier waves of refugees and creating one of the world's largest and most protracted displacement crises. Nine years on, the central promise that accompanied the international response remains unfulfilled: the Rohingyas have not returned home.
More than one million Rohingyas are now living in Bangladesh, overwhelmingly in crowded camps in Cox's Bazar. A generation of children has grown up knowing Myanmar only through the memories of parents and grandparents. For many, the word "home" describes a place they have never seen.
The most disturbing feature of this crisis is not merely its duration. It is the way the Rohingyas have remained trapped in a geopolitical contest over Myanmar, while the international community has struggled to translate concern into a viable political solution.
China and India, two of the most influential powers in Myanmar's neighbourhood, have important strategic and economic interests there. Both have maintained engagement with Myanmar's military authorities, seeking to protect their own interests and preserve influence. The military leadership, meanwhile, has continued to manoeuvre between competing external powers while the country sinks deeper into conflict.
Myanmar's recent political developments have done little to improve the prospects of the Rohingyas returning to their homeland. The military authorities have sought legitimacy through a general election widely criticised by opponents as manipulated and lacking credibility. The emergence of a new political administration under military influence does not, by itself, alter the fundamental reality: those claiming authority in Naypyidaw do not exercise effective control over much of the territory where the Rohingyas once lived.
That contradiction is at the heart of the repatriation problem.
The Arakan Army, which has established control over large parts of Rakhine State, including areas of significance to the Rohingya population, has emerged as a crucial actor. Yet its previous assurances that it would facilitate or initiate the return of Rohingyas have not translated into a meaningful repatriation process.
The Myanmar authorities have recently spoken of taking back more than 300,000 Rohingyas whose identities have been verified. But such assurances create little confidence when the relevant authorities lack effective control over the Rohingyas' homeland.
Repatriation cannot be reduced to a bureaucratic exercise of verifying names and issuing promises. A safe return requires security, citizenship, freedom of movement, access to homes and land, livelihoods and basic rights. Most importantly, it requires confidence that those who return will not once again become victims of persecution or violence.
None of these conditions appears remotely secure.
The civil war has made an already complex crisis still more dangerous. Myanmar is no longer dealing simply with a confrontation between the military and ethnic minorities. Armed groups have seized territory, alliances have shifted and the authority of the central government has been severely weakened. Rakhine State itself has become a major theatre of conflict.
For Bangladesh, this is not an abstract geopolitical problem. It is an increasingly heavy national burden.
The camps accommodating Rahingya have consumed enormous financial and administrative resources. Bangladesh has provided shelter to a population that is not its own and for a crisis over which it has little control. The pressure on land, forests, public services and local communities has been substantial. The humanitarian situation also creates serious security concerns, particularly as young people in the camps face limited opportunities, uncertainty about their future and exposure to criminal networks and extremist recruitment.
At the same time, the generosity of the international community is showing signs of fatigue.
Humanitarian funding for the Rohingyas has been declining even as their needs remain immense. The world's attention and resources are being pulled towards other devastating crises, from Sudan to Gaza and beyond. That is understandable in a world confronted by multiple wars and humanitarian emergencies. But competing crises cannot become an excuse for abandoning a problem that has remained unresolved for nearly a decade.
The international community must resist the temptation to regard the Rohingya crisis as a humanitarian problem that can simply be managed indefinitely.
It is a political crisis requiring a political settlement.
There are already voices advocating some form of long-term integration of the Rohingyas into Bangladeshi society. Such proposals may appear pragmatic to those observing the crisis from afar. They are not, however, an acceptable substitute for repatriation.
Bangladesh is a densely populated developing country with limited land and resources. It cannot reasonably be expected to permanently absorb more than one million refugees whose displacement resulted from events in a neighbouring country. Nor would permanent settlement resolve the underlying political and security conditions that produced the exodus in the first place.
The international community therefore needs to move beyond declarations of solidarity and humanitarian appeals. China, India and other countries with influence over Myanmar must use that influence to push all relevant actors towards a credible political process. The United Nations and major international powers must maintain pressure for accountability, citizenship rights and guarantees of safe and dignified return.
Bangladesh, for its part, needs sustained international diplomatic and financial support while continuing to insist on the principle that repatriation must be voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable.
Nine years is far too long for a temporary refuge to become a permanent limbo.
The Rohingyas cannot remain indefinitely as pawns in Myanmar's civil war or as collateral damage in the strategic calculations of regional powers. Nor can Bangladesh be left to shoulder an ever-growing burden while the world gradually loses interest.
The danger extends beyond the camps. Prolonged displacement, political exclusion, armed conflict and growing frustration can create conditions for criminality, radicalisation, trafficking and cross-border instability. What is now principally a humanitarian crisis could become a far wider regional security problem.
The ninth anniversary should therefore be more than another occasion for speeches, appeals and expressions of sympathy. It should be a deadline for renewed diplomacy.
The goal must remain clear: a safe, voluntary and dignified return to a Rakhine State where Rohingyas can live with security, rights and a recognised place in society.
If the international community allows another year to pass without changing the political equation, it will not merely be postponing a solution. It will be allowing a generation to grow up without a home -- and allowing a regional crisis to deepen beneath the surface.
