Stuck in limbo: The Rohingya Refugee Crisis three years on

August 24, 2020

By Faria Rashid, advocacy coordinator at ActionAid Bangladesh, and Etienne Berges, policy and advocacy adviser at ActionAid Myanmar.

Heavy monsoon rains are pounding the Rohingya refugee camps at Cox’s Bazar, flooding the crowded settlement and destroying makeshift homes. It is yet another hardship testing the resilience of communities as they battle the COVID-19 crisis and three years stuck in limbo.

In August 2017, hundreds of thousands of  Rohingya  refugees  fled unimaginable violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine province, crossing the border into Bangladesh in search of safety.

Now, more than  860,000  people live in the camps at Cox’s Bazar, making them the largest refugee settlements in the world.

Precarious situation

Rohingya refugees remain in a precarious situation. As they have not been formally granted refugee status, they are unable to integrate into Bangladesh communities and start to rebuild their lives. Unless their safety in Myanmar can be assured, they remain fearful of returning.

In Myanmar, the safety and human rights conditions for the remaining Rohingya communities have continued to deteriorate. Conflict between the Tatmadaw and the Arakan Army has displaced over 80,000 people throughout Rakhine, including thousands of Rohingya in northern areas of the state, with an increased use of landmines.

Ahead of Myanmar’s November elections, Rohingya Muslim communities in rural villages and internment camps in central and northern Rakhine State have reported the absence of voter lists in many areas. This means that they can’t register to vote.

Rohingya communities in central and northern Myanmar also remain extremely vulnerable to a potential COVID-19 outbreak, with identified cases on the rise.

Cox’s Bazar

Coronavirus has also reached the refugee camps at Cox’s Bazar, where the pandemic is presenting a huge threat in the overcrowded settlement and where recent flooding and heavy rains could lead to the virus spreading faster.

Farah Kabir,  Country Director of ActionAid Bangladesh, has warned that  COVID-19 could ‘spread like wildfire’  through the crowded Rohingya camps.  

ActionAid has been working in the camps throughout the pandemic to provide life-saving public health messages about how to stop the spread of coronavirus.

Our response

We’re  providing hygiene advice and mask-making training so that Rohingya women, like Hazera, can protect their families and communities from the virus.

Hazera, 20. Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
Fabeha Monir/ActionAid

“I made masks after completing a mask-making workshop. I have learned many things about how to protect myself from Covid-19,” she says.

The women making masks in our workshops are helping to meet the demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) and earning an income through the production.

Levels of gender-based violence are also rising due to the COVID-19 lockdown. Nusema  is living in a two-room shelter with eight members of her family. She told us that because of the lack of food and work, “the  men are always frustrated and  angry”.

Nusema, 45, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
Fabeha Monir/ActionAid

ActionAid has set up women-friendly  spaces, where women can receive advice and support. Sharmin  works in one of these centres, where she is helping Rohingya women who are at risk of domestic violence.

“I am working hard to provide my service. I am proud that I am able to support one of the most vulnerable populations,” she says.

While the future remains uncertain for Rohingya refugees, their resilience in facing multiple crises and persecution is remarkable.

More details

ActionAid Bangladesh is hosting a two-day conference to mark the third anniversary of the beginning of the Rohingya Crisis. This will bring together members of the Rohingya diaspora living around the world to discuss how to jointly push for justice in Myanmar and better inclusion in host countries.

For more details about the conference, Connecting the Rohingya Diaspora: Highlighting the Global Displacement, hosted by ActionAid Bangladesh in collaboration with the Centre for Genocide Studies at the University of Dhaka, and the Centre for Peace and Justice at Brac University, visit https://actionaidbd.org/rohingya-conference
For more information about ActionAid’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, and how you can support frontline workers, visit https://actionaid.org/stories/2020/our-response-covid-19-pandemic

Originally published by ActionAid International on 20 August 2020.

Protestors at COP 28 in Dubai. Photo: Konrad Skotnicki.

Belfast Climate Change March, 2019. Photo: Trócaire.

The Profit Driving the Crisis

Despite their overwhelming contribution to global emissions, fossil fuel companies continue to attract significant financial backing—driven by their enduring profitability. This is starkly illustrated by the case of ExxonMobil, the top fossil fuel investment held by asset managers based in Ireland. In 2023, ExxonMobil reported €33.63 billion ($36 billion) in profit. That is almost twice the GDP of Botswana (€18.1 billion) and nearly three times Namibia’s GDP (€11.5 billion).

Ireland plays a hugely disproportionate role in facilitating investments into fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil. In 2023, the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland generated an estimated 72.5 million tons of CO2e. This is more than the CO2e emissions for the entire country of Ireland—and more than ten times that generated by Sierra Leone.

The Global Human Impact

The climate crisis is here, now, and it is causing disproportionate harm in the Global South. In Bangladesh, rising sea levels and increasingly severe cyclones are displacing coastal communities, with projections indicating that 17% of the entire country could be underwater by 2050. The legally binding Paris Agreement on climate change explicitly acknowledges the importance of tackling private finance. Its three overarching goals are: keeping below 1.5C of warming; increasing adaptation and making finance flows consistent with low emissions and resilience.

This gives a clear mandate for action: both tax reform and corporate regulation are needed to tackle financial flows, and both nationally in Ireland and at EU level, ‘polluter pays’ taxes are lacking and regulation of the financial sector remains weak and fragmented. While EU regulation exists, it is designed more to nudge investors toward more sustainable investment practices by increasing transparency and reporting levels than to enforce strict standards. And it is moving in the wrong direction: the recently passed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive excluded investments; and now the EU Commission’s Omnibus legislative proposal threatens to undo the limited gains made on climate plans, as well as blocking future attempts for stronger action at national level.

The Risk of Inaction

Fossil fuel investment is too profitable to remain weakly regulated. If Ireland continues with its current strategy of encouraging FDI at all costs, and relying on weak EU regulation, we are headed for catastrophe. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly warned that every fraction of a degree beyond 1.5°C brings irreversible consequences: collapsed ice sheets, vanishing coral reefs, and extreme weather events that will make vast regions of the planet uninhabitable. And yet, companies are developing oil and gas fields that could push global warming beyond 2°C.

Our research found that 91% of the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland were to companies that have plans for fossil fuel expansion like these. Ireland cannot afford inaction on this issue.

About This Research

The figures in this report regarding investment from Ireland are based on new research commissioned by ActionAid Ireland and Trócaire. In the paper, we uncover the scale of fossil fuel investment through Ireland, who the investors are, and in which fossil fuel companies they are investing. We analyse the current regulatory framework and explain why it is inadequate—and moving in the wrong direction. And we make specific recommendations for change, which are summarised below.

Summary of Recommendations

Regulate the private financial sector
Ireland must end its outsized role as an enabler of destructive fossil fuel investment. Ireland should introduce a strong gender-responsive national human rights and environmental due diligence framework which includes the regulation of investors with respect to human rights and the environment and climate. The transposition of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive could achieve this if downstream activities are included and the Omnibus proposal is rejected. Ireland should prohibit investments in fossil fuel expansion and require investors to implement climate transition plans consistent with a 1.5°C climate limit.

Endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
Ireland should endorse developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to curb fossil fuel expansion and commit to a fair and funded phase out of fossil fuels.

Support tax justice
Ireland should support bold and fair new global tax rules through the UN Framework Convention on Tax, should adopt all OECD BEPS measures, and should conduct an updated and comprehensive spillover analysis of its tax policy. Ireland should take coordinated action globally, at the EU level and domestically to introduce a range of new taxes to mobilise finance needed for climate justice, based on ‘polluter pays’ and social equity principles such as wealth taxes for the highest earners, climate damages tax on investors, fossil fuel production taxes and levies on aviation and shipping.

Finance a just transition
Ireland must also meet its fair share climate finance obligations under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, and pay our ecological debt to the Global South. Ireland should support conditionality-free debt cancellation for countries on the front lines of the climate crisis, commit to a new UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt, moving debt negotiations from the IMF to the UN, and to a debt workout mechanism that is fully representative and fair.