Hope for Rohingya Youth: Education in the World's Largest Refugee Camp

Rangers with displaced Rohingya after a series of interviews.

In the wake of the genocidal attacks against the Rohingya people in Burma in 2016 and 2017, which sent more than a million fleeing to Bangladesh, FBR sent over a small team to report on the situation in the new refugee camps and hear the stories of what had happened in Burma, to see if God had a role for us with the people there. After several short missions, we were able to establish a small team of Rangers and conduct an abbreviated training, despite a very tight security environment and limited movement for the Rangers in the camps. Later travel restrictions due to COVID prevented further headquarters team visits for a while but the Rangers continued to bring help, hope and love as they could in the camps, including activities such as facilitating development and income projects for widows and establishing wells. Recently, a headquarters team was able to visit our Rohingya Rangers once again. Here, one team member reports on what he saw that made the strongest impression on him.

To see any community pull together to strengthen and care for one another is an inspiring thing. But to see this happen in a place like the Rohingya refugee camp in Ukhia, Bangladesh (one of the largest refugee camps on the planet) is humbling, to say the least.

The Rohingya in Bangladesh are caught between a rock and a hard place: in their homeland, Burma, they face violence and discrimination based on religious-nationalist arguments that the Muslim minority has no place in Burma and should just migrate to Bangladesh. While the Rohingya have been fleeing violence in Burma for generations, it culminated in 2016 and 2017, when more than a million people fled for their lives as the Burma Army unleashed a genocidal onslaught that saw thousands of Rohingya killed as their villages were burned.

Bangladesh provided refuge to the masses of fleeing people in the wake of those atrocities but does not acknowledge the Rohingya as citizens of their country either, and has struggled to manage such a large and desperate population, who are essentially living in limbo. The Rohingya have been allowed to exist within the camps, but are restricted from accessing many things that could improve their situation, including education. Bangladesh does not want these refugees to get the idea that they can make a new life for themselves there. The refugees in the camps face diseases, limited healthcare, food shortages, and bouts of flooding and fire. Today, there are over one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, each one with an uncertain future.

A small glimpse of the Ukhia refugee camp.

That is the context in which a group of about twenty young men, some of them FBR Rohingya Rangers, have started two community-powered schools covering grades K-12 for about 400 children and teens. And when I say community-powered, I mean they did this themselves: no outside funding, no help from NGOs. The twenty teachers open their own (extremely small) homes six days a week, converting them into classrooms which are then filled to the brim with neighborhood kids. Where does the funding for books and school supplies come from? The students themselves raise the money, often selling their own meager rations just for a chance to go to school. 

One of the most important and striking things about these schools is something that might escape the notice of a Western observer. The schools accept both boys and girls. The opportunity for a high school education is rare enough for the boys of the camp, but in this conservative Islamic culture, it is all but non-existent for girls.

Umar (name changed), one of the Rangers who teaches in both schools, says he has always been teaching. “When I was in fourth grade, I taught the third-grade students,” he explains. “When I was in fifth grade, I taught fourth grade, and so on.”

I asked Umar why he teaches. It’s hard, hot, time-consuming work and the pay is almost nothing. Though the teachers do ask the students and their families to contribute a small sum if possible, most of them cannot pay and yet are welcomed regardless. Umar has a family of his own to provide for. He answered my question in his tiny shelter, offering me a papaya.

Students gathered in the classroom of a self-established school in Ukhia camp.

“High school education is not provided in the camps. Even for the lower grades, there are not enough schools. But without education, the suffering of our people will only increase. The Burma Army and the Arakan Army, who control our homeland, do not want us to exist. And the Bangladeshi government does not want us to succeed. It seems there is little hope for the Rohingya. But if we are uneducated, I feel there is certainly no hope.”

Pray for their situation, which is desperate. Pray for a miracle of peace in Burma that would allow them to return home. Pray that the government of Bangladesh would have compassion on the Rohingya. Pray for the souls of our Rangers, and that they would know the love and peace of God that is only found in His Son.

Thank you and God bless you,

Dante Bryant with the Free Burma Rangers