Why Rohingya refugees still can't return to Myanmar

Myanmar's military-backed government is again talking about bringing Rohingya refugees home from refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh.

Earlier this month, authorities in Naypyidaw, Myanmar's capital, said they had made progress verifying Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh for possible repatriation.

Of the 820,000 names submitted by Bangladesh, Myanmar said it had verified around 308,000 as former residents but would not repatriate them until security conditions improve in civil war-torn Rakhine State.

But analysts told DW that large-scale, safe repatriation is now arguably further out of reach than at any point since 2017. Myanmar is engulfed in civil war, the military no longer controls most of Rakhine state , and the Rohingya are denied citizenship.

In August 2017, Myanmar's military launched sweeping operations in northern Rakhine state after alleged attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) militant group on security posts.

More than 750,000 Rohingya, a long-persecuted Muslim ethnic minority in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, fled to Bangladesh, joining hundreds of thousands displaced by earlier crackdowns.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh now hosts around 1.2 million Rohingya refugees, mostly in camps around the southern coastal district of Cox's Bazar, according to UN bodies.

Myanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as one of its 135 officially recognized ethnic groups and has long referred to them as "Bengalis," implying they are migrants from Bangladesh despite generations of Rohingya having lived in Rakhine.