Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) for securing this important debate and for his excellent contribution. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) in the shadow FCDO team for her work on Myanmar and my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) for her tireless work to keep the plight of the Rohingya on the agenda through her work on the all-party parliamentary groups on Bangladesh and the rights of the Rohingya.

It is nearly six years since that fateful morning in the early hours of 25 August 2017 when violence broke out in Rakhine state, Myanmar. The military, supported by militias, launched a murderous campaign that took thousands of lives. Villages were set ablaze, entire families were killed, and women and girls suffered atrocities, including rape. According to eyewitnesses, from August to September, the Naf river, which empties into the bay of Bengal, literally ran red with blood. Roughly 24,000 were killed in that period—an unimaginable number. Some 700,000 fled Rakhine state for Bangladesh, the majority of whom travelled by foot, walking through jungle and rough terrain, or by boat, taking the perilous journey across the bay of Bengal. Today, 1 million refugees still reside in Bangladesh. It is a humbling reminder of the horror that leads someone to flee their home.

In the last two years, what little attention has been paid to Myanmar has focused on the military’s coup and attempts to crush civilian resistance. Military attacks on the civilian population are up nearly 400%. Over 600 villages have been torched by the junta’s troops. A staggering 17.6 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance. However, the suffering of the Rohingya began decades ago, as we have heard from many Members, and continues to this day outside Rakhine state and in south-eastern Bangladesh. As António Guterres has said, the Rohingya are

“one of, if not the, most discriminated people in the world”.

Whether in Rakhine state or Cox’s Bazar, the Rohingya people are currently without a future. It is important that we confront that reality today.

I used the word “humbling” a little earlier in this speech, and I think it is appropriate, as, having spoken in several debates on this matter over recent years, I am saddened that we are still talking about it and that our hopes for the Rohingya people look, if anything, further away. In 2020, I spoke for the Opposition in a debate on this matter and said

“It is a tragedy that…the international community is still having to provide them”—

the Rohingya—

“with immediate life-saving humanitarian support. That is the situation that we need to take a long, hard look at, to learn from mistakes and rectify them so that we are not here next year and the year after having the same debate.”—[Official Report, 3 November 2020; Vol. 683, c. 55WH.]

And yet, following the coup in February 2021, the prospect of a durable political solution that allows Rohingya refugees and forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals to return safely and voluntarily to their homes looks more distant than ever.

I commend much of the work that the Government are doing to sanction the abhorrent military regime in Myanmar and support the ICJ case to bring the perpetrators of atrocities to justice, although there is certainly more that they can do, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green raised the other week—for example, on banning aviation fuel, and the role of maritime insurance companies based here in Britain in the shipping of aviation fuel to Myanmar’s military. However, in the meantime, some 1 million Rohingya refugees are languishing in south-eastern Bangladesh with no meaningful prospect of a future, and we cannot ignore that either.

The hon. Members for Loughborough (Jane Hunt), for Ipswich (Tom Hunt), for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) and for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), my hon. Friends the Members for Bethnal Green and Bow and for Birmingham, Erdington (Mrs Hamilton), and the Chair of the International Development Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), all made excellent contributions, and some spoke of the conditions in the camps at Cox’s Bazar, which we know are poor. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are living in settlements only a few kilometres wide, in tents and huts made of bamboo and thin plastic sheeting. We can only imagine what it is like living in those conditions during the monsoon and cyclone seasons, when hailstorms, wind, rain and lightning hammer down on these homes.

In March this year, we were served a powerful reminder of the conditions in these camps when we saw images of a towering fire tearing through these huts. That inferno impacted around 15,000 refugees, destroying something like 2,800 shelters and key infrastructure networks including schools, medical clinics and service points. It also displaced 50,000 people. That is only one of some estimated 222 fire incidents between January 2021 and December 2022. According to a Bangladesh Ministry of Defence report, those fires included 60 cases of arson. For the many families living in those camps, it must seem as if wherever they go, they are not safe.

I recognise that the Government responded to the March incident with £1 million pledged through the UNHCR for pressure cookers, to replace the use of liquefied petroleum gas, but does the Minister recognise that restrictions on the materials used to construct the huts and the fact that barbed fencing restricts movement increase the risk of tragedies as well? The camp’s residents are reportedly not allowed to build permanent structures. Bricks are banned—only bamboo and tarpaulin may be used—leaving them at the mercy of the elements. Has the Minister raised this issue with her counterparts in Bangladesh?

Meanwhile, basic human needs in those camps are going unmet. Food assistance to the refugees, who have been left reliant on humanitarian aid, is dwindling: we have already heard that the World Food Programme says that it needs £103 million just to avoid further ration cuts in a community where malnutrition is already rife. In February, for the first time in five years, the World Food Programme had to cut food rations to refugees by 17% across the board due to a lack of funding. In response, the UK has offered £4 million for this year. According to the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Tom Andrews, 45% of all Rohingya families in the camps are living with insufficient diets; some 51% of Rohingya children and 41% of pregnant and breastfeeding women are anaemic; and 40% of children are suffering from stunted growth because of a lack of nutrition. As we have heard from Members across the House, half of the people living in those camps are children. This is a tragedy unfolding in real time, day by day for these people, yet we are cutting our support to the bone.

This year’s commitments represent an 82% decrease on 2020. Asked about this issue recently, the Minister said that

“we do not look at the issue of restoring the money, we look at the issue of need.”—[Official Report, 19 April 2023; Vol. 731, c. 134WH.]

So I ask whether she can publish what possible assessment could conclude that need has declined by 82%. I know she will say that fiscal constraints—the result of her party’s dire economic record—mean that we have to keep ODA at 0.5%, but what she does not acknowledge is that within those constraints there are clear political choices to be made, including the blank cheque that the Minister has signed off to the Home Secretary for asylum hotels and the half a billion pounds going to British International Investment over this year and last.

In his speech at Chatham House last week, aptly titled “Can rhetoric match reality?” the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), stated that food insecurity would be one of his priorities. Can the Minister explain how these cuts to food assistance to the Rohingya assist that? Likewise, can she explain how the Rohingya crisis remains one of the Government’s top priorities, as the Europe Minister claimed in October?

Of course, the Rohingya need not only food, but a future. As such, I welcome the focus on skills outlined in the 2023 joint response plan: education and development of livelihood skills are essential among the young and deprived populations that are living in these camps. It was therefore disappointing to see the UK permanent representative speak at the conference on the joint response plan in support of those provisions, yet announce not a single penny of support. This is becoming an increasing habit, so will the Minister revisit this issue and set out what support the United Kingdom is providing to the response plan this year?

The urgency of the crisis in Cox’s Bazar is starkly demonstrated by the number of Rohingya who are now attempting dangerous sea crossings. The numbers trying to get to Malaysia or Indonesia increased fivefold last year to more than 3,500, at the cost of hundreds of lives. It is again a reminder of why our humanitarian and development work is essential to tackling the causes of displacement and irregular migration, and why it is essential that we do not leave Bangladesh to shoulder the burden alone. Most countries would struggle to manage an influx of 1 million refugees—it certainly puts our own country’s struggle with just a fraction of those numbers into perspective. To do so in a country where GDP per capita is only $2,500 is remarkable, so we have to pay thanks to the Government of Bangladesh for what they are doing—I note that the high commissioner is here, listening to this debate. They are stepping up and taking a share of responsibility that we would not expect of such a relatively poor country; it is doing so brilliantly in terms of development.

We remain hopeful that, one day, the Rohingya can return to Myanmar. We recognise that that is where the ultimate solution of this crisis lies, but we must also confront the reality that that prospect has gotten further away, not closer, in recent years. Fading international attention to the crisis in Bangladesh is making matters worse. As such, does the Minister agree that we must learn lessons about our assistance to refugees displaced for many years, including prioritising local engagement from the outset, shifting from emergency assistance over time, and tipping the scales from short-term humanitarian work to development for longer-term needs? Can she say whether assessments have been made as to where investment now can generate greater returns or reduce need in the long run?

Moreover, can the Minister speak to the need for conflict and atrocity prevention in the first place? Atrocities do not happen overnight, as we have heard from Members across the House—they are years in the making—yet it was notable that the Minister of State did not mention conflict and atrocity prevention in his speech at Chatham House last week. What lessons have the Government learned about atrocity prevention, and will they be looking to take up the International Development Committee’s recommendations laid out in its important recent report on atrocity prevention?

Finally, can the Minister say something on how the Government will help to support the women and girls who continue to bear the brunt of this crisis, including the many bearing the physical and psychological scars of sexual violence? It is imperative that Britain plays its full part in the response to the Rohingya crisis to secure the decent future that they deserve. As international attention dwindles, the Government must reflect on their role and ask what will become of those million refugees—stateless, fenced in, increasingly hungry and at the mercy of people traffickers. That question is not just for Bangladesh, but for all of us who desire a humane solution to one of the world’s most harrowing crises.