DRUGS, VIOLENCE THREATEN ROHINGYA MEN
Youngsters lack direction at world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh
SITTING near a tea stall smoking and drinking sugary milk tea, a group of young Rohingya men are bored and worried about their futures in the world’s largest refugee settlement.
Having fled over the Myanmar border into Bangladesh with about 730,000 mainly Muslim Rohingya from August 2017, the men and their families spent the first year battling to survive, building shelters and readjusting to refugee life.
But 18 months on, with the camps more orderly, the men who would have been running households at home find their roles diminished, and the uncertainty is driving increasing numbers to drugs and violence, according to other Rohingya and aid workers.
“It’s not as though we want to sit here in the afternoons,” Jahid Hasan, 16, said.
“It’s not easy to get work in the camps. There are schools for children, but not for us. We are tense about our future, but there’s not a lot we can do.”
Under Bangladesh government rules, only children aged up to 14 can attend learning centres to study English, Burmese, maths, and life skills, while aid agencies hire adults on cash-for-work projects in the 34 camps making up the refugee settlement.
But this has left a void for teenagers like Hasan living among the 900,000-plus Rohingya now in the camps, who complain that they struggle to find ways to fill their days.
“Those boys don’t go to school and moreover they get involved in drugs like yaba,” said Al Morijam, 35, a mother of two, referring to the highly addictive synthetic drug produced in Myanmar that is more popular than heroin in parts of Asia.
“Yaba is everywhere in the camps and Marijuana is common. We need the army to come and stop them selling yaba,” said Morijam, who sits on a women’s committee set up by the International Organisation for Migrants to help women’s views be heard.
Mohammad Hossen, aged about 24 and one of few Rohingya in the camps to have attended university, said he was concerned that many youngsters were “losing their character” because of a lack of guidance and education.
“This could destroy the future generation of our country,” said Hossen, who was in his second year at Myanmar’s Sittwe University in August 2017 when thousands of Muslim Rohingya started to flee an offensive by the Myanmar military.
In a recent report the Inter Sector Coordination Group, set up to co-ordinate work between humanitarian groups at the camps, said inadequate services for adolescents aged between 15 and 24 remained a major issue.
While a learning framework for adolescents is on the cards, it was not certain when this would begin in the camps.
Various aid agencies have expressed concerns that this left teenagers particularly vulnerable to child marriage, child labour, human trafficking, abuse and exploitation.
Across the camps, teenage boys could be seen playing football and volleyball on flattened areas of ground, while aid agencies have set up youth clubs, community centres and art projects to get them involved.
A Victory Cup football match was held in December between players in two camps watched by a crowd of about 4,000, organised by government officials in charge of the camps.
“The reason they are getting involved in drugs is because they have nothing to do. We need more events,” said Shamimul Huq Pavel, a camp-in-charge officer at Kutupalong, the largest refugee camp.
“Once they have jobs and education, this will decrease.”