by Abantee Harun
Inside the refugee camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf, the heavy air, filled with the smell of dampness and cooking smoke, fills the narrow alleys. Women, with covered heads and faces veiled with worry and fear, were seen moving quietly from one shelter to another. More than a million Rohingya fled Myanmar to escape persecution. Despite crossing the border, the violence did not end for many; it merely took on a different form. Among all other forms of violence, gender-based violence (GBV) has become epidemic in the world’s largest refugee settlement.
The Rohingya crisis, one of the world’s most excruciating humanitarian distresses, has been characterized by a gendered dimension. When Myanmar’s military launched the military crackdown in Rakhine state in 2017, women and girls were deliberately targeted. Many reports documented rape, sexual slavery, and mutilation—acts that the UN described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” At that time, more than 700,000 refugees fled across the border into Bangladesh, joining earlier waves of displacement. By 2022, the population of the camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf exceeded a million. Roughly 52 percent of these refugees were women and girls, and about 16 percent of households inside the camps were now headed by women.
Behind all the statistics, there lie thousands of stories of endurance, silence, and survival. Rohingya women, who carry the scars of violence, have to endure new forms of violence as patriarchy is repositioned within the camps, while exposing them to a range of vulnerabilities—being ‘stateless’ and ‘woman.’ This is the covert epidemic of gender-based violence (GBV) in the world’s largest refugee settlement—an unsettled crisis.
A Gendered Crisis
Several studies reported that the patterns of violence Rohingya women used to face in Myanmar—sexual assault, forced marriage, and systematic humiliation—have not disappeared by crossing borders; rather, those have been replaced or reinforced by domestic abuse, intimate partner violence, abandonment, child marriage, and exploitation within the camps.
Among all forms of gender-based violence (GBV), domestic violence stands as the most widespread and normalized, but still an integral part for everyday suffering. ‘Every night you can hear some loud screams’—but the next day she covers her bruised body up, saying that she ‘fell in the bathroom.’ – said a humanitarian worker. Everyone knows what it is, but no one says it aloud. Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is the dominant form of GBV, which mostly remains unreported and unseen. “Women say it’s part of conjugal life.’ They don’t call it violence. Yet it rarely reaches police or formal reporting systems. Aid workers describe this cycle as the “unseen engine of everyday suffering.” In a community where honor defines survival, silence becomes protection, when the aid workers intend to intervene, women refuse to seek support, as they consider violence as ‘inevitable’ or ‘destined.’ These testimonies reveal a bleak trend of domestic violence rooted in patriarchy, compounded by economic despair, and justified by cultural norms.
Marriage, for many families, is viewed as safety—a way to protect girls and women with dignity. However, inside the camp, it becomes another form of control and violence. Early marriage rates are extremely high. For most of the girls, marriage is the end of any possibility of studying further. According to different studies, up to 80 percent of girls are married before 18. Parents think marriage will protect their daughters, but in most cases, it only exposes them to different forms of abuse.
Polygamy has also surged. With no formal registration or oversight, men take multiple wives, often abandoning earlier ones without any responsibility or resources. Marriages take place usally between Rohingya males and females, but sometimes men tend to marry Bangladeshi women so that they can get the opportunity to get out of the camp and a chance to assimilate with the Bangladeshi society. In such cases, it is almost impossible for the abandoned Rohingya wife to claim any compensation. Rarely is a Rohingya woman married to a Bangladeshi man; even if it happens, the woman faces double vulnerability. Bangladeshi law restricts such unions, leaving her with no legal protection if she is abused or abandoned.
Women abandoned by husbands or left destitute are particularly vulnerable. Some enter transactional relationships with camp leaders or volunteers—not for profit, but for protection. In such desperation, the line between consent and coercion blurs beyond recognition.
On the other hand, unmarried girls are also at risk of daily hazards—harassment while collecting firewood, abuse while waiting in the aid distribution line, or the constant discomfort of being gazed at. Sexual violence persists too, in different forms—harassment, coercion, and transactional sex—all hidden behind the camp walls made of bamboo and tin but known to all. At night, when the humanitarian worker must leave, ‘the camps become a hub of all forms of crimes’—a humanitarian worker includes ‘forced sex, trafficking, and prostitution—all organized and hidden.’
This humanitarian crisis, where people are hopeless and could easily be lured with false promises, is also advantageous for human trafficking. Statelessness, poverty, and porous borders combine to form a deadly cocktail. In the camps and around, one can hear the cases of children disappearing from camps, women lured with promises of work or marriage, and many survivors forced into prostitution or drug smuggling. ‘This moment you see the children playing in the yard—and the next moment they are gone.’ Parents are worried, and people get terrified. Usually, they don’t report. “To whom can we report? What will change? How?’ In some places, like Shamlapur, where refugees and host communities interact with each other, traffickers, having a similarity of language and appearances, kidnap the victims unnoticed. Limited scopes of law-enforcement within the camps makes accountability almost impossible.
While people talk about physical violence that is explicit and overt, the psychological toll often remains subtle and invisible. Years of persecution, displacement, camp life, and insecurity have left deep emotional wounds. Mental health services in the camps are minimal, and cultural stigma about ‘mental illnesses hinder the diagnosis as well as prevent the survivors from seeking support. Cross-sectional studies (Tay 2019, Riley 2020) found high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression among the Rohingya refugees, driven by traumatic experience and current living conditions. Yet only a fraction of survivors receives psychosocial support, as they equate depression with weakness or spiritual possession. ‘Sadness is normal after you have left your home and seen violence. Marriage helps cure depression.’
At the heart of the crisis lies a culture of silence. Reporting gender-based violence is rare because survivors fear stigma, disbelief, or further violence. Longstanding patriarchal values hold that a woman’s dignity defines the dignity of the family, and therefore, it should be protected at any cost. Speaking about abuse or making it public can lead to ostracization or forced marriage to the perpetrator. In addition, many women, because of their deep-rootedness in patriarchal culture, simply do not identify abusive behaviors such as marital rape, verbal humiliation, or economic control as violence at all.
However, the deeper structure of inequality—referred to as ‘structural violence’ by sociologist Johan Galtung—shapes the violence at large and individual acts in particular. Economic stress is a major trigger. Men, stripped of jobs and identity, vent their frustration on those closest to them. “Everyone has become impatient as they are spending time idly, hopelessly,” said a Rohingya woman. “When a wife asks for money, the husband feels helpless and angry. Then he beats her.” Being stateless, Rohingya women are denied legal identity, access to justice and judicial services, and mere control over their living conditions. Restricted mobility and minimum or no access to education and employment reinforce women’s dependency on men. Additionally, overcrowded camp life and poor infrastructure increase exposure to risk. A dearth of safe space, inadequate lighting, and poorly designed sanitation facilities further worsen women’s safety situation. In fact, their survival is subject to a system that barely recognizes their needs and challenges. The process of normalizing violence functions both as a cause and consequence of structural oppression; when institutions fail to protect, and violence becomes routine, survival becomes negotiation.
Although a number of humanitarian organizations are working with the camp residents, the working system itself poses barriers. While multiple agencies operate within the camps, gaps in coordination, language barriers, and an inadequate number of female staff deter Rohingya women’s access to and interest in services. Furthermore, fear of confidentiality breaches and insensitivity from the surrounding community only retraumatize the survivors even more than before.
Widespread violence against women and children in the Rohingya camps is not just an outcome of displacement—it is a complex dynamic of deeper inequities in power, gender, and humanity. Without addressing the invisible wounds of GBV, the promise of safety, security, and dignity for Rohingya people will remain distressingly unfinished.
References:
Galtung, J. (1990). Cultural Violence. Journal of Peace Research, 27, 291-305. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022343390027003005
Riley, A., Akther, Y., Noor, M., Ali, R., & Welton-Mitchell, C. (2020). Systematic human rights violations, traumatic events, daily stressors and mental health of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Conflict and health, 14, 1-14.
Tay, A. K., Riley, A., Islam, R., Welton-Mitchell, C., Duchesne, B., Waters, V., Varner, A., Moussa, B., M. Mahmudul Alam, A. N., Elshazly, M. A., Silove, D., & Ventevogel, P. (2019). The culture, mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of Rohingya refugees: A systematic review. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 28(5), 489-494. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2045796019000192
Abantee Harun, educator and researcher.
