Nine years ago, Bangladesh opened its doors to the largest influx of Rohingya refugees amid one of the gravest episodes of ethnic persecution in recent history. Nearly 1.2 million Rohingya now live in Bangladesh, most of them in the sprawling settlements of Cox’s Bazar. Nine years later, the world still speaks of them as a “crisis.” But what happens when a crisis lasts for so long?
It becomes a condition. A generation grows up inside it. Children become adolescents; adolescents become parents. Humanitarian assistance becomes the architecture of their everyday life. Hope becomes something rationed alongside food, healthcare, and education.
Bangladesh’s response to the plight of this displaced community deserves recognition. Ordinary people in Cox’s Bazar and beyond opened their homes and hearts to those fleeing violence. At the same time, the government has continued to stand with refugees and keep their plight on the international agenda, despite the enormous pressures of hosting such a large population. That solidarity, however, should never become an excuse for the rest of the world to step back.
Unfortunately, the international community’s attention has since steadily moved elsewhere, even as the conditions that forced the Rohingya from Myanmar remain unresolved. The 2026 Joint Response Plan sought $710.5 million to reach 1.6 million refugees and members of host communities. The figure shows that the world is still being asked to fund survival, while it’s doing far too little to change the political conditions that perpetuate the need for it.
This is the central failure of the Rohingya response. We have become better at managing displacement than ending it. This is not a matter of choice between humanitarian relief and repatriation. Both are necessary, but neither is sufficient. Safe, voluntary, and dignified return remains the only credible durable solution. Return without citizenship, security, rights, and political recognition would reproduce displacement in another form.
So, we need to ask a more uncomfortable question: what are we doing with the years in between?
The Rohingya are not passive recipients waiting for governments to ease their lives. Women are organising informal networks, supporting survivors of violence, sharing health information, and creating spaces for collective solidarity. Young people are acquiring skills and imagining futures beyond the camp. These are not signs that the crisis is being solved, but evidence of agency surviving despite the crisis. Yet our humanitarian architecture too often treats that agency as an inconvenience rather than an asset.
Women, in particular, are asked to become resilient without being given meaningful power. Livelihood programmes can measure participation without asking whether women have greater control over resources, decisions, or their own mobility. Safe spaces and sexual and reproductive health services remain vulnerable precisely when they should be considered essential protection infrastructure.
Furthermore, the camps sit in one of Bangladesh’s most disaster-prone regions. Cyclones, monsoon flooding, landslides, and fires can turn an already precarious existence into catastrophe. The 2026 response plan itself identifies disaster risk and climate change as a core priority. A child growing up in such conditions does not experience “temporary displacement.” For the child, it is simply their childhood.
That is why the 10th year should mark a shift from “managing” a refugee population to “protecting” a generation. For Bangladesh, this means continuing to insist on a political solution while investing in the dignity, education, health, skills, and resilience of those who are here. It means supporting host communities whose own resources and patience are under pressure. It means treating the Rohingya not as an indefinite humanitarian caseload but as people whose rights and agency matter.
For international actors, it means ending the cycle in which humanitarian pledges substitute for political action. Donors must provide predictable, multi-year financing rather than waiting for each annual emergency appeal. Regional powers cannot remain focused on strategic interests in Myanmar while Bangladesh continues to absorb the consequences of Myanmar’s crisis. Most of all, the Rohingya themselves must be part of determining what a future solution looks like. No repatriation plan designed without them can be genuinely voluntary. No programme for their future can be legitimate if women and young people are treated merely as beneficiaries.
Nine years is long enough to know that waiting is not a good strategy. Bangladesh needs stronger international burden-sharing, while global actors must ensure Myanmar bears political responsibility for creating and resolving this displacement. The Rohingya should not have to prove their humanity every time humanitarian funding runs short. And the world cannot continue to express concern while allowing political paralysis to become permanent.
The 10th year should therefore be more than another anniversary. It should be a deadline for changing the question—from “how long can Bangladesh sustain the Rohingya response?” to “how much longer will the world tolerate the conditions that make the response necessary?”—and finding a solution that finally ends their displacement rather than simply managing it.
Farah Kabir is country director at ActionAid Bangladesh.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
Follow The Daily Star Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions, commentaries, and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see our guidelines for submission.
