By Su Su Win. Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
When Rohingya rights worker Shakil Akter speaks with people who say they have experienced violence, intimidation or other abuses in the refugee camps, he is working within an environment of insecurity that has also touched his own family.
Shakil, 24, is a Rohingya community worker involved in human rights documentation and advocacy in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps.
He says his work includes speaking with survivors, recording allegations of rights violations and passing information to organisations or other relevant actors.
But his interest in human rights did not begin as a professional career.
It developed from displacement, his family’s experiences and what he observed around him after arriving in Bangladesh.
“I chose this field because I am a survivor, and my family is also a survivor of human rights violations,” he said.
From Maungdaw to the refugee camps
Shakil was born in Kyet Yoe Pyine village in Maungdaw Township, Rakhine State.
Before displacement, he attended religious lessons at a local maktab and studied at a village middle school, reaching Grade 8.
He is the eldest of five siblings. His mother died while he and his siblings were still young.
His family fled Myanmar during the mass displacement of Rohingya in 2017 and came to Bangladesh.
Like many young Rohingya whose education was interrupted by displacement, Shakil attempted to continue studying after arriving in the camps. He later completed what he describes as the second year of higher secondary-level education through a community-led school.
His father later worked as a mentor teacher with the Norwegian Refugee Council, according to Shakil.
Entering community advocacy
Shakil says he began participating in human rights and community-protection training in 2020.
That year, he became involved with the Rohingya Youth Association, or RYA, where he says he worked as a camp coordinator.
He later became involved with the Rohingya Youth Advocacy Network, or RYAN, a Rohingya youth-led initiative established in 2023.
According to Shakil, his responsibilities included coordinating community members, discussing protection concerns and encouraging young Rohingya to participate in documentation and advocacy work.
He describes the work as both a process of collecting information and building relationships.
“Every day, I communicate with new people, listen to their experiences and emotions, and build a wider network within the refugee camps,” he said.
He says that over several years he has documented more than 5,000 alleged human rights violations.
Rohingya Khobor has not independently reviewed the full dataset behind that figure. It is therefore presented as Shakil’s account of the volume of cases he has worked on, rather than as an independently verified total.
For Shakil, the work often involves people who are afraid of retaliation or further harm.
That makes confidentiality important.
Information about alleged violations in the camps can expose survivors, witnesses and those collecting testimony to additional risks if identifying information is handled carelessly.
Moving into research and case work
Shakil says his work later expanded beyond youth-led advocacy.
In 2025, he worked as a case-management worker on a project under the Rohingya Advocacy Center. The project has since ended.
In 2026, he joined the Human Rights Research and Advocacy Centre, or HRRAC, where he says he works as a Human Rights Research Associate.
Across these roles, he says his work has included research, documentation, survivor communication and reporting alleged violations.
His experience reflects one emerging role for young Rohingya inside the camps: acting as intermediaries between community members experiencing harm and organisations able to document, refer or respond to protection concerns.
But the work can also carry risks.
Violence reaches the family
Shakil says his father, Akter Kamal, has experienced two violent incidents in recent years.
The first occurred in 2023.
According to Shakil’s account, his father was at a shop at around 10 p.m., preparing to watch a football match, when armed men arrived and gunfire broke out.
His father was shot in the left leg.
Shakil says another incident occurred on September 12, 2026.
He was away from the family shelter at the time.
According to his account, around eight unidentified men came to the shelter at approximately 9 p.m. and asked his father where Shakil was.
When his father did not give them information, Shakil says, the men assaulted him.
Neighbours reportedly came outside after the confrontation began, and the group left.
The identities of the men and their motive have not been independently established. Rohingya Khobor therefore cannot conclude that the attack was connected to Shakil’s human rights work.
That distinction matters.
In an environment where armed violence, intimidation and community disputes can overlap, an attack on the relative of an activist does not by itself establish why the attack happened.
For Shakil, however, the incidents have made questions of safety personal.
He continues to work with people reporting alleged abuses while knowing that members of his own family have also experienced violence.
The difficult work of documenting abuse
Human rights documentation inside a refugee camp is not simply a matter of collecting allegations.
A case may involve a survivor who is frightened, a witness who does not want to be identified, an accusation that cannot immediately be independently confirmed, or information that could expose someone to retaliation.
Shakil says this has made listening and maintaining relationships central to his work.
“Some survivors are now safer and continue to communicate with me,” he said of people whose cases he has worked on.
The precise outcomes of those cases have not been independently established.
What his experience does show is the complicated position occupied by Rohingya community-based rights workers.
They can have access to language, social networks and local knowledge that outside organisations do not possess as easily.
At the same time, they live within the same insecure environment as the people whose experiences they document.
For Shakil, that means there is little separation between the issues he records and the world in which he and his family live.
He says he continues the work because he believes people should be able to live without fear and make decisions about their own lives.
“Human rights violations must stop if our society is to achieve peace,” he said.
For a young Rohingya documenting allegations from inside prolonged displacement, that conviction comes with a practical question: how can people record abuse and help others speak about it when those doing the documenting may themselves need protection?
