Renewal of Bangladeshi passports for Rohingyas in Saudi Arabia raises legal concerns: Experts 

Legal experts have raised questions over the government's recent position on renewing Bangladeshi passports for nearly 69,000 Rohingyas residing in Saudi Arabia, describing it as legally ambiguous and contradictory.

The concerns follow remarks made by Foreign Adviser Touhid Hossain, who acknowledged that a good number of Rohingyas had travelled to Saudi Arabia using Bangladeshi passports years ago, largely during the era of handwritten passports.

Speaking to reporters in the capital yesterday (28 January), he said past administrative failures had allowed Rohingyas to obtain Bangladeshi travel documents and migrate abroad, adding that Saudi authorities are now pressing Bangladesh to renew those passports, creating a complex diplomatic and legal challenge.

"We tried to avoid this situation," the foreign adviser said. "But considering multiple national interests, we had to decide that these 69,000 individuals would be issued Bangladeshi passports. However, issuing a passport does not mean granting Bangladeshi citizenship."

However, legal experts dispute that interpretation. 

Supreme Court (SC) lawyer Dr Sharif Bhuiyan described the statement as "highly unusual," arguing that passports are universally recognised as proof of nationality.

"Non-citizens can be issued temporary travel documents, but a passport is a formal recognition of citizenship by a state," he told The Business Standard.

"There is no option in a Bangladeshi passport to list nationality as 'Rohingya'. The nationality field must state 'Bangladeshi', which makes the claim of issuing passports without citizenship inherently contradictory," the senior lawyer argued. 

He also said responsibility for past irregularities cannot be ignored. Rohingyas could not have obtained these passports without involvement from government offices. This represents a failure of the state, and that responsibility cannot be shifted to Saudi Arabia.

He acknowledged that the government may be facing a diplomatic deadlock, forcing it to opt for a pragmatic solution.

However, he stressed that if passports are renewed solely for repatriation purposes, each case must clearly document that the original documents were obtained fraudulently and that the passports will be cancelled after repatriation to prevent future citizenship claims.

Echoing the concerns, another SC lawyer, Barrister Mustasim Tanzir, said citizenship is a fundamental prerequisite for issuing a Bangladeshi passport. "There is no legal framework to issue a Bangladeshi passport while identifying the holder as a foreign national."

"If a Bangladeshi passport is issued, the holder must be shown as a Bangladeshi citizen. There is no system or option to issue Bangladeshi passports while identifying the holder as a foreign national," he said.

Meanwhile, Adviser Touhid argued that international precedents exist where passports are issued outside narrow citizenship frameworks, reiterating that the Rohingyas are globally recognised as a distinct ethnic group originating from Myanmar's Rakhine (Arakan) and must ultimately be repatriated.

"There are precedents around the world. Even foreign nationals can be issued passports. Our core concern is that these people originated from Myanmar," he said.

"Minor technical issues should not stall the process," he said, adding that creating conditions for Rohingya repatriation requires sustained international engagement.

Former diplomat and Bangladesh Enterprise Institute President M Humayun Kabir also expressed uncertainty over the issue, saying he found it difficult to understand how Bangladeshi passports could be issued without citizenship and declined to comment further.