By: Suleman Rahmatullah
The world once again finds itself debating the logistics of Rohingya aid—proposing corridors, drafting border strategies, and navigating fragile diplomacy—while still refusing to engage with the people at the heart of the crisis. For the Rohingya, every corridor discussed without their voice, every plan drawn without their consent, is not a bridge to safety but a cage of containment.
The recent proposal for a humanitarian corridor into Rakhine State—backed by the United Nations and tentatively entertained by Bangladesh—has triggered alarm among Rohingya community leaders, rights advocates, and displaced families. Their fear is rooted not in abstract diplomacy, but in lived history. Every initiative that bypasses Rohingya participation has ended in betrayal. Every agreement made above their heads has led to deeper marginalization.
Since 2017, over 700,000 Rohingya fled across the Naf River after Myanmar’s military launched a campaign of systematic killing, sexual violence, mass arson, and forced displacement—acts that the United Nations later described as having “genocidal intent.” These people joined hundreds of thousands already in exile from earlier purges in 1978, 1991, and intermittent crackdowns in the decades that followed. Today, over 1.3 million Rohingya live in Bangladesh, with nearly 900,000 in the overcrowded camps of Cox’s Bazar and an additional 30,000 on the remote island of Bhasan Char, all without formal citizenship, access to legal livelihoods, or a timeline for dignified return.
In 2024, as Myanmar’s central military regime began losing ground to ethnic armed groups, the Arakan Army (AA) took control of significant portions of northern Rakhine, including Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Rathedaung. For many observers, this shift presented an opportunity—a chance for ethnic Rakhine leadership to negotiate autonomy and stability in Arakan. But for the Rohingya, it introduced a new wave of terror under a different flag.
Reports from the ground in 2025 reveal a grim continuity of abuse. Rohingya villages in Maungdaw have been burned again, not by the junta but allegedly by AA forces accusing residents of harboring militants. Homes were set ablaze, elderly residents beaten, children abducted. Historic cemeteries in Kin Taung and other villages have been seized, and families forced to vacate land and participate in unpaid forced labor—constructing roads and military posts that facilitate their own repression. Others are compelled to hand over crops or livestock to AA outposts, with some forced to share 50% of their fishing catch or farm yield.
Meanwhile, misinformation has become a weapon. AA-linked media platforms have blamed the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) for abductions carried out by armed men in uniform, despite eyewitness testimony and photographic evidence pointing clearly to AA involvement. The goal appears twofold: to fracture Rohingya solidarity and to justify further repression under the guise of inter-communal conflict.
Amid this unfolding scenario, the humanitarian corridor proposal rings hollow. Rohingya leaders in Cox’s Bazar have dismissed the idea, warning that any aid routed through militarized zones—whether controlled by the junta or the AA—would be vulnerable to corruption, coercion, and militarized diversion. Aid, they argue, cannot be decoupled from protection. A corridor with no political guarantees, no safety enforcement, no legal recognition of the Rohingya’s rights, is merely an extension of the camp system—this time inside Myanmar’s borders.
Bangladesh’s official stance, too, has been contradictory. On April 27, Foreign Affairs Adviser Md Touhid Hossain claimed the government had agreed “in principle” to the UN proposal for a humanitarian corridor. Days later, National Security Adviser Dr. Khalilur Rahman denied any such commitment had been finalized. The resulting confusion reflects not just bureaucratic misalignment but a deeper strategic hesitation: Bangladesh does not want to inherit long-term responsibility for a crisis it did not create, nor be seen as enabling another half-solution that could permanently strand Rohingya across the border in a legal and humanitarian limbo.
There is also the geopolitical context. With China acting as mediator in junta-ULA ceasefires and India reinforcing border surveillance, any attempt to define a protected aid route could become entangled in regional power calculations. Within this matrix, the Rohingya risk being reduced to a buffer population—contained but voiceless.
What Rohingya leaders are demanding is not radical. They seek a UN-supervised safe zone inside Rakhine where they can return voluntarily, live securely, and exercise basic civil and political rights. They demand to be included in governance, to have their destroyed villages rebuilt, their citizenship restored, and perpetrators of genocide held accountable under international law. Without such guarantees, aid becomes palliative, not transformative.
The corridor-versus-safe zone debate, at its core, is a question of power. A corridor treats the Rohingya as beneficiaries. A safe zone acknowledges them as rights-bearing citizens. A corridor delivers relief. A safe zone restores dignity. The Rohingya are not asking for charity. They are asking for agency. They are asking to be heard not just as victims of history, but as architects of their future.
In 2017, the world promised “never again.” But six years later, the same old dynamics are resurfacing—refugees being herded through militarized channels, decisions being made without consultation, and international institutions tiptoeing around the politics of perpetrators.
Rohingya history is a cycle of dispossession, denial, and deferral. But that cycle can break—if the world chooses justice over expediency, inclusion over imposition. No corridor, however well-intentioned, can substitute for the presence of the Rohingya in decisions about their return, reintegration, and recovery.
Without representation, every corridor is not a humanitarian passage—it is a cage, constructed with international funding and political neglect.
The Rohingya deserve better. And the world, if it still holds to its promises, must do better.
Suleman Rahmatullah is a writer and researcher.
