Rohingya repatriation roadmap must include citizenship rights

Since 2017, the world has spent nearly $5.42 billion on the Rohingya response in Bangladesh, according to the UN. That money has kept more than a million people alive. It has not brought a single one of them home.

Now the money is running out. The 2026 Joint Response Plan, launched in May, seeks $710.5 million, 26% less than the $964.5 million sought for 2025. Meanwhile, Bangladesh still hosts about 12 lakh Rohingya, and around 150,000 more have arrived since early 2024.

This is the arithmetic behind Prime Minister Tarique Rahman's speech at the United Nations on 23 September. Addressing a high-level event co-hosted by Bangladesh and The Gambia, he set out a five-point plan and argued that the time had come "to move from empathy to a search for root causes and their solutions, from promises to action and from managing displacement to ending it."

His first point called on international and regional stakeholders to establish "a clear and credible roadmap" for early, safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable repatriation. His second demanded an end to violence against civilians in Myanmar, so that the Rohingya can regain the confidence to return. His last point called for regional cooperation against the narco-economy, human trafficking and illegal arms.

The diagnosis is right: a relief model with falling funding and no exit is a slow-moving crisis, not a policy. The question is how to make "ending displacement" work.

The cost of waiting

Every year of delay raises the bill. Some 216,000 children have been born in the camps over nine years, Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mohammed Mizanur Rahman earlier told TBS. More than half the refugee population is under 18. The commissioner has warned that keeping so many young people idle for years is not sustainable, and that the crisis is turning into a security problem.

The signs are already visible: drug trafficking along the border, dangerous sea journeys towards Malaysia and Indonesia, and armed groups competing for control inside the camps. These costs weigh on law and order, on the host economy of Ukhiya and Teknaf, and on Bangladesh's image as an investment destination.

Why returns keep failing

Bangladesh knows repatriation is possible because it has done it. After Burma's Operation Nagamin in 1978, 187,250 Rohingya were returned in under two years. After a second exodus in 1991-92, most of roughly a quarter of a million refugees also went back.

But both returns failed for the same reason. In 1982, Burma passed a citizenship law recognising 135 "national races" and excluding the Rohingya, a community that had once sent members to parliament and even a health minister, Sultan Mahmud, to U Nu's cabinet. Those who went home as residents became foreigners on paper. People were returned; their status was not. That is why a third, larger exodus followed in 2017.

Rakhine's stability is China's business too

The ground in Rakhine has also changed. The Arakan Army now controls 14 of the state's 17 townships and the entire 270-kilometre border with Bangladesh. The government that verifies return lists no longer controls the land people would return to.

This is where China matters most. Beijing is the only power with real leverage over both the junta and the Arakan Army. Its Kyaukphyu deep-sea port, special economic zone and oil and gas pipelines to Yunnan all sit in Rakhine, and the Arakan Army has publicly pledged to protect Chinese investments. China also brokered a pilot repatriation scheme in 2023, though it never took off.

The logic is economic as much as diplomatic. Chinese investment needs a stable Rakhine; so does repatriation. Dhaka should therefore seek China not merely as a mediator but as a guarantor of a return framework in which both the junta and the Arakan Army accept responsibility for returnees' safety and rights. The prime minister's call on states to "use their leverage" applies to no one more than Beijing.

The diplomatic dividend

Return is not only cheaper; it is also Bangladesh's biggest diplomatic opportunity in the region. Nine years of hosting more than a million people have earned Dhaka considerable moral capital. A successful, rights-based return would turn that goodwill into lasting influence.

Bangladesh shares land borders with only two countries, and Myanmar is its sole overland gateway to Southeast Asia. As long as the Rohingya question stays unresolved, relations with Naypyitaw remain frozen, and so do the trade, connectivity and ASEAN ambitions that a stable eastern neighbour could unlock. A settled Rakhine would also let Bangladesh manage a border now held by a non-state armed group through agreements rather than anxiety.

A breakthrough would strengthen Dhaka's hand elsewhere too. It would show that a mid-sized country can mobilise China, the Muslim world, the West and the UN behind one objective, and give Bangladesh a stronger voice in the UN, the OIC and among donors. At home, it would ease pressure on host communities and give the new government a defining foreign policy achievement.

Who pays for the return?

The international system funds relief every year, but no agency carries a clear mandate, timeline or budget for return. The UN must own that gap. Part of the response should move from sustaining camps to preparing return: a time-bound roadmap led by the UN, UNHCR presence and monitoring inside Rakhine, and an annual public report on what moved, what stalled and who is responsible. Donors who are cutting relief budgets should find return a better investment than indefinite care.

Justice is part of the same equation. The International Court of Justice closed its hearings in The Gambia v Myanmar in January, and a judgment is awaited. Bangladesh holds camp birth records, household databases, survivor testimony and lists of destroyed villages. 

A standing mechanism to organise and share this material with The Gambia's legal team, the UN's Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar and the International Criminal Court would strengthen enforcement of any judgment and any claim for reparations. Accountability raises the price of obstruction for Myanmar.

Citizenship is the cheapest guarantee

In August, Myanmar's foreign ministry said it had verified nearly 309,000 Rohingya in Bangladesh as "former residents" of Rakhine. It is a start. But past residence is a fact; citizenship is a right. Verification that stops at residence sends people back to the post-1982 limbo, and prepares the ground for a fourth exodus.

Bangladesh's roadmap should therefore carry a sixth point the prime minister's plan implies but does not yet state: every return agreement must commit, in writing, to verification as a step towards citizenship. The demand must be about status, not just numbers.

Preparation can begin now: teaching the Myanmar curriculum in the camps and expanding skills training for young Rohingya are not integration, but an investment in a return that lasts.

The prime minister has framed the goal well: not managing displacement, but ending it. Ending it for good means a return with rights. That is not only the just outcome. After nine years and more than $5 billion, it is also the only affordable one, and the one that would give Bangladesh the diplomatic standing its generosity has earned.

Enayet H Jakaria is a development practitioner and public policy analyst who has worked with Rohingya communities in Cox's Bazar since 2010.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.