'Forget about going back': 9 years on, Rohingya crisis enters dangerous phase

View of Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, April 23, 2026. Valeria Mongelli hide caption

CHIANG MAI, Thailand — As the world's attention stays fixed on the Middle East and Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees are marking a grim anniversary largely unnoticed.

Nine years ago this week, a military crackdown in Myanmar drove them from their homes into Bangladesh, in what the United States called a "genocide."

And still they are arriving. Even as governments discuss whether those in the camps might eventually return, more Rohingya continue crossing from conflict-torn Rakhine state into southern Bangladesh.

Despite more than 1 million people languishing in sprawling camps for almost a decade, as conditions deteriorate and aid shrinks, talk of repatriation is premature, according to analysts. The more immediate challenge is stopping more people from being pushed out.

"Forget about going back right now; people are still coming in, and nobody seems to talk pragmatically about that," independent researcher Jessica Olney, who has worked with the Rohingya for a decade, told NPR.

A man gestures telling Rohingya migrants queuing to receive aid that the delivery has been cancelled, at the Kutupalong refugee camp at Cox's Bazar on November 30, 2017. Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

The exodus began Aug. 25, 2017, when Myanmar's military and armed Rakhine civilians burned hundreds of Rohingya villages and killed at least 6,700 people in a single month, according to Doctors Without Borders. Between 700,000 and 750,000 people crossed into Bangladesh in that wave alone.