A lost generation: perpetual education insecurity among the Rohingya

ABSTRACT

Education security exists when every child has equal access to quality education. Rohingya refugee children suffer widespread rates of education insecurity both in their home country, Myanmar and in their host country, Bangladesh. While the right to education is recognized in several human rights instruments, access to education is not ubiquitous, making the ability to achieve this right challenging for many Rohingya. Government restrictions on accredited education, COVID-19 related school closures, failures in launching a pilot of the Myanmar curriculum, and recent government plans to relocate refugees to Bhasan Char Island have created a ‘lost generation’ of Rohingya youth. This study traces the development of education insecurity among the Rohingya, a stateless ethnic minority group who fled to Bangladesh in 2017 in response to ethnic violence in Myanmar. Drawing upon available literature and primary fieldwork, this study examines the social, cultural, and political determinants of learning opportunities for Rohingya children.

KEYWORDS:

• Rohingya
• refugees
• education insecurity
• inequality
• intersectionality
• COVID-19
• Bangladesh

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Intersectionality is a framework for understanding that people’s intersecting experiences of oppression, discrimination, and marginalization are based on their coetaneous identities. [See Crenshaw, Kimberle, 1989. Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989(8).].

2. An Introduction to the Basic Concepts of Food Security: Food Security Information for Action, Practical Guides (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2008). http://www.fao.org/3/al936e/al936e.pdf.

3. Bangladesh ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in 1998.

4. Learning poverty means being unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10. [See, World Bank Learning Poverty Brief (October 2019). https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/education/brief/learning-poverty.].

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by a grant from the National Geographic Society under Grant No. NGS-62052E-19.