United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and Bangladesh Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus attend an iftar party in the Ukhiya refugee camp, at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where about a million Rohingya refugees have lived since fleeing the violence in Myanmar. Credit: Gazi Sarwar Hossain/PID

By Rafiqul Islam
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Mar 15 2025 (IPS)

When United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres appeared before the Rohingya refugees wearing a traditional white panjabi, a costume of Muslims, to join an iftar party in Ukhiya refugee camp, thousands who had gathered waved to welcome him.

Seeing such solidarity from the Guterres for their long plight, many Rohingya people, who were fasting in the holy month of Ramadan, were emotional, and many shed tears.

The UN chief joined the solidarity iftar party with thousands of Rohingya Muslims in the refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar on Friday to express his solidarity with them. Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus also attended the iftar.

“Every Rohingya went to the iftar party to hear good news from the UN chief – good news to return to our homes in Myanmar. We all want to go back to our home of origin,” Rohingya youth, Ro Arfat Khan told IPS.

Before joining the iftar party, Guterres visited a learning centre in Ukhiya camp and exchanged views with Rohingya children. The children told the UN chief that they want to go back to their home in Myanmar, requesting that he helps ensure their safe and dignified return.

Guterres spoke to Rohingya women and imams and also visited the Rohingya cultural centre to get messages from the forcibly displaced refugees.

During his visit to the refugee camp, the UN secretary-general said in this year’s Ramadan visit, he got two clear messages from Rohingyas – they want to go back to Myanmar and better conditions in camps.

He said the international community should do everything to re-establish peace in Myanmar and to end discrimination and persecution of the Rohingyas.

Aid Cuts to Worsen Situation  

Thousands of Rohingya refugees turned up to the solidarity iftar, where UN secretary-general António Guterres and Bangladesh Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus pledged to continue to find a solution to their plight. Credit: Gazi Sarwar Hossain/PID

Due to a critical funding shortfall for its emergency response, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said it would have to halve its per-person monthly allocation for food for Rohingyas in Bangladesh from USD 12.50 to USD 6 per day from April 1.

“Unfortunately, recently, dramatic cuts in humanitarian aid were announced by the United States and by several other countries, mainly in Europe, and because of that, we are at risk of cutting the food rations in this camp,” Guterres said.

He pledged that the UN would continue efforts to mobilise funds for Rohingyas to avoid a situation in which people would suffer even more and where some people could even die.

“I have to confess that we are on the verge of a deep humanitarian crisis with the announced cuts by several countries of their financial assistance; we are facing a dramatic risk, a risk to reduce the food rations to the Rohingya refugees to a level that would be 40 per cent of 2025,” he said.

He predicted that an unmitigated disaster may occur due to aid cuts and appealed to the international community, saying it had an obligation to invest to support Rohingyas in Bangladesh to ease their plight.

“We will do everything to solve the problem of food rations,” Guterres added.

Recalling that the international community has a special obligation to ensure aid reaches Rohingya refugees, he said the world has not “forgotten them”.

“That is why the cuts by the international community of the aid to Rohingya refugees are unacceptable,”  said Guterres. “I repeat: Cox’s Bazar is ground zero for the impact of budget cuts on people in desperate need, and we must do everything to make sure that that does not happen.”

Resilient Rohingyas

According to him, the forcibly displaced, over one million Rohingyas, who took shelter in Bangladesh after extreme violence against them in 2017, are resilient, but they need the world’s support.

The UN chief said that many Rohingya Muslims arrived in Cox’s Bazar camp after massacres in Rakhine state and decades of discrimination and persecution, escaping brutal human rights violations that triggered widespread anti-Muslim hate.

“Rohingya refugees have come here for what people anywhere seek: protection, dignity, safety for them and their families.”

Guterres said he was inspired by the courage of Rohingyas and moved by their determination. He listened to harrowing accounts of their ordeals in Myanmar and their journeys to Bangladesh.

“They want to go home – Myanmar is their homeland. And returning in a safe, voluntary, and dignified manner is the primary solution to this crisis,” he said.

Guterres urged the Myanmar authorities to take steps in accordance with international humanitarian law to prevent communal tension and violence, and create an environment for the safe and dignified return of Rohingyas to their home of origin in Rakhine state.

“But the situation in Myanmar remains dire, including in Rakhine state. Until the conflict and systematic persecution end, we must support those who need protection here in Bangladesh,” he added.

Noting that the solution must be found in Myanmar, Guterres said the UN will continue efforts to ensure the voluntary, safe and sustainable return of all Rohingya refugees to Myanmar.

“Until then, I urge the international community not to reduce the support to Rohingya refugees,” he added.

Reviving Hopes

After the iftar on Friday, Bangladesh Chief Adviser Prof Yunus delivered his speech in the local dialect, which Rohingya refugees interpreted as a message of solidarity.

“The UN Secretary-General has come to resolve the suffering of the Rohingyas. Not this Eid, (but) I hope, the Rohingyas will be able to celebrate their Eid in their country next time.”

He said if necessary, they will have to fight with the whole world to bring the Rohingyas back to their home of origin.

“During the Eid, people visit the graves of their dearest relatives. The Rohingyas do not even have that opportunity,” the Bangladesh chief adviser said.

Abdur Rahman, who sheltered in the Cox’s Bazar camp in 2017, said around 100,000 Rohingyas were supposed to join the iftar party on Friday, but over 300,000 gathered there to get good news about their return to Myanmar.

“We all – from children to the old – want to go back to our homes. The UN chief’s visit inspired us,” he said.

Ro Arfat said sometimes the Rohingya people become hopeless as they have no state and no home now.

“But, the visit of two dignitaries – the UN chief and the chief adviser – helps us revive our hopes about our home return. This hope has returned to our mind,” he added.

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A young child in Cox’s Bazar engages with her peers at one of BRAC’s Humanitarian Play Labs. CREDIT: BRAC

By Abigail Van Neely
NEW YORK, Aug 21 2023 (IPS)

A Rohingya woman tells a forum of peer counselors the story of her divorce. A survivor of domestic abuse, she has started a new life alone with her daughter. She has weathered a storm of neighbors telling her she was the problem. Now, she provides the support she didn’t have to other women like her.

Similar scenes occur across refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. Here, BRAC, an international NGO based in Bangladesh, has developed a program to train counselors who can provide mental health services to Rohingya refugees. This includes 200 community members who have begun to practice the psychosocial skills they’ve learned in their own lives.

A Growing Need for Support

Over 900,000 Rohingya have fled to Cox’s Bazar since massive-scale violence against Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State began in 2017, the UN Refugee Agency reports. The prolonged exposure of the ethnic minority group to persecution and displacement has likely increased the refugees’ vulnerability to an array of mental health issues, a 2019 systematic review found. Their struggles include post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and gender-based violence.

Around the world, there is growing attention to the importance of socio-emotional learning as a skill to help people in areas of crisis cope with challenges. Educators are often tasked not only with providing traditional academic instruction but with building resilience in children. They are asked to create a sense of normalcy in environments that are anything but normal.

The teaching the children need is much more than about reading, writing, and math; but about giving young children a safe space to practice socio-emotional skills. CREDIT: BRAC

“It’s about not only teaching [kids] how to read and how to do mathematics … in these settings, kids and teachers themselves have the need for psychosocial support,” Ramya Vivekanandan, the senior education specialist at the Global Partnership for Education, said.

Teachers, caregivers, and frontline mental health providers are overburdened, Vivekanandan explains. They lack adequate pay, working conditions, and professional development. As they try to support the growing number of people in crisis, who will support them?

For some counselors in Cox’s Bazar, the answer is each other.

Community Care

Even when resources are available, stigmas around mental health can prevent support from being received. Taifur Islam, a Bangladeshi psychologist responsible for mental health training and supervision at BRAC, says people in the communities he works with are rarely taught to identify their feelings. When you are struggling to access basic needs, Islam explains, it is easy to forget that emotional well-being can improve productivity. If a person seeks help, they may be labeled ‘crazy.’

Training people to take care of their own communities can be a powerful way to overcome stigma in a culturally relevant way.

BRAC’s Humanitarian Play Labs were established in 2017 to give Rohingya children a safe space to practice socio-emotional skills through play. Erum Mariam, the executive director of the BRAC Institute of Educational Development, explains that each play lab is tailored to fit the community it serves. Rohingya children now rhyme, chant, and dance in 304 Humanitarian Play Labs across the camps in Cox’s Bazar.

“We discovered the Rohingya culture through the children. And the whole model is based on knowing the culture,” Mariam said.

‘Play leaders’ are recruited from the camps and trained in play pedagogy. Mariam watched Rohingya women who had never worked before embracing their new roles. As they covered the ceilings of their play spaces with rainbows of flowers – the kind of tapestry that would hang from their homes in Myanmar – Mariam realized that a new kind of social capital could be earned by nurturing joy. Traditional play didn’t just help uprooted children shape their sense of identity – it was also healing for the community.

If a play leader notices a child is withdrawn or restless, they can refer the child to a ‘para counselor’ who has been trained by BRAC’s psychologists to address the mental health needs of children and their family members. Almost half of the 469 para counselors in Cox’s Bazar are recruited from the Rohingya community, while the rest come from around Bangladesh. Most para counselors are women.

Many para counselors are uniquely positioned to empathize with the people they serve as they go door to door, building awareness. This is crucial because it creates a bottom-up system of care without prescribing what well-being should look like, Chris Henderson, a specialist on education in emergencies, says.

At the same time, by supporting others, mental health providers are learning to take care of themselves.

Learning by Doing

A play leader engages the children in the session. Humanitarian professionals encourage frontline teachers, caregivers, and counselors to actualize their own ideas for improvement. CREDIT: BRAC

For months, Suchitra Rani watched violence against Rohingya people every time she turned on the news. When she was recruited by BRAC to become a para counselor in Cox’s Bazar, she saw an opportunity to make a difference. Alongside fellow trainees, Rani, a social worker originally from Magura, poured over new words she learned in the foreign Rohingya dialect and worked to find her place in the community.

Rani tested what she had learned about the value of psychosocial support and cultural sensitivity when she met a 15-year-old Rohingya girl too scared to tell her single mother she was pregnant. Terrified of bringing shame to the family, the girl had an abortion at home. As the young woman spiraled into depression, Rani felt herself slipping into her own fears of inadequacy.

It took time for Rani to convince the girl to open up to her mother. Talking through feelings of guilt slowly led to acceptance. As they worked to heal fractured family bonds, Rani began to feel surer of herself, too.

Now, the Rohingya community calls Rani a “sister of peace.” Rani says she has become confident in her ability to use the socio-emotional skills she’s learned to both help others and resolve problems in her personal life.

Throughout the program, para counselors have changed the way they communicate their feelings and felt empowered to create more empathetic environments.

Islam recounts a 26-year-old Rohingya refugee’s perilous journey to Cox’s Bazar: In Myanmar, the woman’s husband was killed in front of her. One of her two young children drowned during a river crossing as they fled the country. She arrived at the camp as a single mother without a support network. Only once she had the support of others willing to listen could she speak openly.

Islam remembers counselors telling the woman about the importance of self-care: “If you actually take care of yourself, then you can take care of your child also.”

Toward Empowerment 

According to Henderson, evidence shows that one of the best ways to support someone is to give them a role to help others. In places where there may be a stigma against prioritizing ‘self-care,’ people with their own post-crisis trauma are willing to learn well-being skills to help children.

A collection of teacher stories collected by the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies reveals a similar pattern. Teachers in crisis areas around the world say the socio-emotional skills they learned to help students helped them reduce stress in their own lives, too.

Henderson suggests that the best way international agencies can promote trauma support is by holding up a mirror to the strength already shown by refugee communities like the Rohingya.

Instead of seeing what they lack, Henderson encourages humanitarian professionals to help give frontline teachers, caregivers, and counselors the agency to actualize their own ideas for improvement. Empowered community leaders empower the young people they work with, who, in turn, learn to empower each other. This creates “systems where everyone sees their position of leadership as supporting the next person’s leadership and resilience.”

At the end of her para counselor training, the Rohingya domestic abuse survivor said she wasn’t sure what she would do with the skills she’d learned for working through trauma, Islam remembers. But she did say she wished they were skills she had known before. According to Islam, she is now one of their best para counselors.

“The training is not only to serve the community; that training is something that can actually change your life,” Islam says. It’s why he became a psychologist.

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Rohingya refugee girl Rohima Akter, 13, is excited about learning to write in the Burmese language in the UNICEF learning centre in Cox's Bazar.​ ​The new curriculum provides Rohingya refugee children with formal and standardized education.​ Credit: UNICEF Bangladesh

By Joyce Chimbi
United Nations, Aug 23 2022 (IPS)

Syrian refugee children are among the most disadvantaged in Iraq. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, only 53 percent of school-aged Syrian refugee children in the country were enrolled.

Across the globe, in Bangladesh, more than 890 000 Rohingya refugees live in 34 congested camps in Cox’s Bazar. COVID, fire, monsoons, floods, and landslides impacted education.

In Nigeria, since the conflict began in north-eastern Nigeria in 2013, at least 2,295 teachers have been killed, more than 1,000 children abducted, and 1,400 schools destroyed.

Yet, Education Cannot Wait, the global fund for United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, believes that progress can be made to prevent the children from Syria, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Chad, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Pakistan, and South Sudan among other regions, from falling off the education system and consequently missing out on lifelong learning and earning opportunities.

“There is no dream more powerful than that of an education. There is no reality more compelling than to attain one’s full potential. We must keep our promise: to provide inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, as enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG4) and Human Rights Conventions,” says Gordon Brown, the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

“While progress is being made, we still have a long way to go. Today, we are faced with the cruel reality of 222 million children and adolescents worldwide in wars and disasters in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America who need urgent financial investments to access a quality education.”

This progress has now been documented in ECW’s We Have Promises to Keep: Annual Results Report released today. The annual report comes on the back of ECW’s estimates laying bare the plight of crisis-impacted children and adolescents and how this plight remains less visible to the global community.

A young girl in her classroom in Yemen, where an ECW-funded programme is supporting educators and students by improving access to quality education. Credit: Building Foundation for Development Yemen

According to ECW, 222 million school-aged children and adolescents caught in crises urgently need educational support. These include 78.2 million who are out of school and 119.6 million who are in school but not achieving minimum competencies in mathematics and reading.

Worst still, an estimated 65.7 million of these out-of-school children—or 84 percent—live in protracted crises, with about two-thirds or 65 percent of them in just ten countries, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Yemen.

Conflict, forced displacement, climate-induced disasters, and the compounding effect of the COVID-19 pandemic fueled increased education in emergency needs, with funding appeal of US$2.9 billion in 2021, compared with US$1.4 billion in 2020.

While 2021 saw a record-high US$645 million in education funding—the overall funding gap spiked by 17 percent, from 60 percent in 2020 to 77 percent in 2021, according to the newly-released annual report.

“ECW’s solid results in our first five years of operation are proof of concept that we can turn the tide and empower the most marginalized girls and boys in crises with the hope, protection, and opportunity of quality education. We can make their dreams come true, whether it’s to become a nurse, a teacher, an engineer, or a scientist,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait.

“With our strategic partners, we urge governments, businesses, and philanthropic actors to make substantive funding contributions to ECW to help turn dreams into reality for children left furthest behind in crises.”

Towards delivering the promise of lifelong learning and earning opportunities, the report shows ECW investments with strategic partners reached close to 7 million children and adolescents, 48.4 percent of whom are girls, since becoming operational in 2017.

Despite the ongoing multiple and complex challenges of COVID-19, conflict, protracted crises, and climate-related disasters, the annual report reveals that the fund and its partners continue to expand the response to education in emergencies and protracted crises globally.

In 2021 alone, ECW mobilized a record-breaking US$388.6 million. Total contributions to the ECW Trust Fund are now top US$1.1 billion.

Across 19 countries supported through ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programmes, donors and partners mobilized more than US$1 billion in new funding for education programmes.

Through its strategic partnerships, ECW reached 3.7 million children and adolescents across 32 crisis-impacted countries in 2021 alone, including 48.9 percent girls. An additional 11.8 million children and adolescents were reached through the fund’s COVID-19 interventions that same year, bringing the total number of children and adolescents supported by COVID-19 interventions to 31.2 million, of which 52 percent are girls.

But these highlights are tempered by concerns over an increase in the scale, severity, and protracted nature of conflicts and crises, continued attacks on education, and record-high displacements driven by climate change, conflicts, and other emergencies.

For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly deepened the global learning crisis. In 2020 and 2021 alone, 147 million children missed over half of in-person instruction, and as many as 24 million learners may never return to school, according to UN estimates.

These challenges notwithstanding, the report provides more evidence of progress made by focusing on quality learning outcomes for the most marginalized children in crises. Of all children reached by ECW’s investments to date, half are girls, and 43 percent are refugees or internally displaced children.

Additionally, ECW grants indicate “improved levels of academic and or social-emotional learning; 53 percent of grants that measure learning levels showcase solid evidence of increased learning levels compared to 23 percent of grants active in 2020.”

Overall, the share of children reached with early childhood and secondary education increased substantially. Early childhood education increased from 5 percent in 2019 to 9 percent in 2021. Secondary education increased from 3 percent to 11 percent for the same period.

On inclusivity, estimates show that 92 percent of ECW-supported programmes demonstrated an improvement in gender parity. Today, more girls and boys are completing their education and or transitioning to the next grade or level, with a weighted completion rate of 79 percent and transition rate of 63 percent.

Teachers were not left behind as nearly 27,000 teachers—52 percent female—were trained and demonstrated increased knowledge, capacity, or performance in 2021.

To address the special needs of children and adolescents traumatized by war and conflict, over 13,800 learning spaces now have mental health and or psychosocial support activities. The number of teachers trained on mental health and psychosocial support topics doubled in 2021, reaching 54,000.

Ahead of its High-Level Financing Conference in Geneva in February 2023, the organization called on government donors, the private sector, foundations, and high-net-worth individuals to turn commitments into action by making substantive funding contributions to ECW.

The funding has already made a difference in Nigeria, where since January 2021, ECW partners facilitated 26,775 new school enrolments, an increase of 49.4 percent over the previous year.

In Cox’s Bazar, where 77 percent of children study at home, ECW partners supported the caregivers with bi-monthly visits and through radio broadcasting and the distribution of educational materials.

And in Syria, a consortium of partners was able to significantly improve conditions for children, with 74 percent of children showing an improvement in mathematics.

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