More than one million Rohingya are living in refugee camps in Bangladesh. They lack ‘legitimacy’ in the sense that they are not recognised as citizens by Myanmar, or as refugees by Bangladesh.
Key words: Myanmar, political legitimacy, Rohingya, aid agencies.
There is a tension between different actors and forms of legitimacy within international discourse on human trafficking and irregular migration related to the Rohingya from Myanmar. Aid agencies, who are struggling to maintain their own programs and operational legitimacy amid funding cuts, often emphasise lack of service provision in the camps as the primary driver of trafficking in persons.
Yet this discourse about human trafficking can displace the crucial issue of an ongoing lack of political legitimacy for Rohingya people, who continue to have neither citizenship in Myanmar, nor refugee status in Bangladesh.
In this article, we draw on analysis of 75 publicly released documents by international non-government organisations, United Nations agencies, donors, news and media articles, from 2017-2025, about human trafficking and irregular migration of the Rohingya and examine these questions of legitimacy.
The Rohingya
The Rohingya people have been described as the ‘largest stateless community’ and the ‘most persecuted minority’ in the world. There are currently more than one million Rohingya who have been forced to leave Myanmar and are now living in the camps of Cox’s Bazar, and on the isolated island of Bhasan Char, in Bangladesh. In recent years, national and international non-government organisations and UN agencies have been working to alleviate the suffering of the refugees through the provision of services including food assistance, shelter, health, education, protection and WASH (Water, Sanitation & Hygiene).
Yet humanitarian agencies implementing programs with the Rohingya in Bangladesh are increasingly facing challenges of funding. In December 2025, the Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis Joint Response Plan 2025-26 reported that an overall appeal for $US 934 million, had only received $US 434 million. Despite a consistent level of need, annual funding received for the Rohingya Joint Response Plan has decreased over recent years from a high of $US 690 million received in 2021, the year of the military coup. With the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development and cuts by other donor countries, it is likely that these funding shortfalls will continue.
This leaves Rohingya in Bangladesh facing a dual crisis. They have no formal refugee status or rights to work in Bangladesh; and in addition, they don’t have the right to work and make a living in the refugee camps. The Rohingya are therefore often left vulnerable to illicit economies including irregular migration and human trafficking.
Human trafficking and irregular migration
The International Organisation for Migration defines irregular migration as ‘movement of persons that takes place outside the laws, regulations, or international agreements governing the entry into or exit from the State of origin, transit or destination.’ Amidst an array of challenges, risky irregular migration remains a crucial issue for the Rohingya in Bangladesh. In 2025, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 6,500 Rohingya people undertook risky sea journeys to other countries in the region with 900 reported as missing.
‘Trafficking in persons’ is meanwhile defined by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime as ‘the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit’. Rohingya refugees living in the camps in Cox’s Bazar, especially girls, are vulnerable to human trafficking within Bangladesh and to other countries in the region.
The question of aid agency legitimacy
Meanwhile, globally, there is increasing attention on the legitimacy of aid agencies, with the Overseas Development Institute describing the aid sector being at a ‘crossroads’. The political legitimacy of NGOs is not the same as that of states – with clear differences in representation and procedural checks and balances. Yet NGOs also require legitimacy in the eyes of their funders, supporters and beneficiaries. Humanitarian studies academic Hugo Slim argues that aid organisations’ legitimacy is derived legally and morally. NGOs can claim that they operate in line with human rights law, international humanitarian law and refugee law. There is moral or ethical legitimacy that NGOs can derive through seeking to protect human dignity and equality.
Yet NGOs rely on more than this. For many vulnerable communities, including the Rohingya in Bangladesh, such forms of derived legitimacy could seem overly abstract and with little relevance to their everyday struggles. Slim argues that the legitimacy of NGOs amongst their beneficiaries also needs to be generated in practice through tangible outcomes – raising funding and delivering programs that are effective. Without the ability to maintain their services and interventions in communities or refugee camps, it is challenging to sustain legitimacy in the eyes of beneficiaries. And in the constrained humanitarian funding environment of the last five years globally, international NGOs have faced falling levels of resourcing and constrained ability to deliver services.
Neither refugee nor citizen: The lack of legitimacy for Rohingya in Bangladesh & Myanmar
The challenge of international humanitarian agency legitimacy in Bangladesh is linked to the unique challenges that the Rohingya face to their own political legitimacy. The largest forced migration of Rohingya people occurred in 2017 when Burmese military crackdowns and human rights abuses pushed more than 700,000 across the border into Cox’s Bazar and even more were displaced in subsequent years. Since November 2023, another 165,000 Rohingya have crossed the Bangladesh border to take shelter from civil war in Rakhine State. As of June 2026, a total of 1,197,411 Rohingya were living in the camps of Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char in Bangladesh.
The status of the Rohingya in Bangladesh
The government of Bangladesh is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention (or the 1967 protocol), and it therefore classifies the Rohingya as ‘Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals’, rather than refugees. The Bangladesh government continues to host them in the camps but is opposed to the provision of work or movement rights within Cox’s Bazar. Most Rohingya people in the camps of Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char have been issued with identity cards by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees which allows them access to food rations and other services such as fuel. However, since 2023 the Bangladesh government have placed a moratorium on new registrations. There is estimated to be 50,000 unregistered Rohingya people in the camps who lack refugee status and are also without official identity within the camps. This lack of political status as either citizens in Myanmar or refugees in Bangladesh significantly impacts their rights to livelihood and movement in Bangladesh and contributes to their vulnerability towards human trafficking and irregular migration.
The status of the Rohingya in Myanmar
The Rohingya are not recognised as citizens under Myanmar’s citizenship law. Making the situation worse is the escalation in violence in Myanmar since 2021, and the ongoing armed aggression of the Burmese military in many parts of the country. This means that it is not safe for the Rohingya to return to Myanmar. Political stability in Rakhine state, and progress on citizenship status in Myanmar, could have paved the way for potential repatriation options. But ongoing civil war, humanitarian crisis, and instability inside Myanmar prevents the emergence of viable future options for the Rohingya people’s return. Myanmar’s civil wars also complicate regional advocacy around rights for the Rohingya. Member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are increasingly consumed by dilemmas over re-engagement with the military regime, and other neighbouring countries are dealing with their own flows of displaced people and economic and diplomatic concerns.
Aid agency and media discourse about human trafficking and irregular migration of the Rohingya
Causes of human trafficking and irregular migration are complex but there are two prominent arguments made within the documents we analysed from aid agency reports, official press releases and national and international media:
- Some argue that the lack of funding for services such as food, health, WASH, and education, and the associated declining legitimacy of aid agencies, creates a push factor for the Rohingya to leave the camps through different forms of irregular migration including human trafficking.
- In contrast, others argue that the primary issue causing human trafficking and irregular migration is the Rohingya people’s fundamental lack of rights to work and movement. The lack of livelihood options leads them, especially vulnerable women and girls, to engage in unlawful activities in dangerous environments outside the camps.
Our analysis of 75 documents on human trafficking and irregular migration among the Rohingya, showed that almost two thirds of documents made explicit reference to lack of funding for humanitarian service delivery. The core argument within these documents is that a reduction of services by the humanitarian aid agencies due to global fund-cuts, including food programs or health care, pushes the Rohingya toward irregular migration and vulnerability to human trafficking.
For example, the Country Director of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Bangladesh, Wendy McCance, highlighted the links between trafficking and funding cuts in a press release in 2023. She explained that:
‘When rations go down, you get a rise in malnutrition alongside compromised immune systems. Tensions increase as people do what they can to survive…you get an immediate increased reliance on hazardous coping strategies such as getting further into debt, child marriage, sex for survival, and attempting to leave Bangladesh through irregular routes, increasing the risk of trafficking.’
Similarly, the Country Director of Save the Children in Bangladesh, Shumon Sengupta, stated in 2025, ‘we urge donors and the public to step up funding to the Rohingya refugee response now so that we can prevent a hunger crisis that could push more families to send their children away on dangerous boat journeys’. And in UN News independent experts Tom Andrews and Michael Fakhri stated that ‘reductions in vital food assistance can make refugees more desperate, which…could also lead to a myriad of human rights concerns, such as a heightened risk of human trafficking, particularly of children and girls, and more refugees embarking on perilous boat journeys.’
Underlying this discourse is the challenge for NGOs and UN agencies to maintain their own levels of funding, and their ability to operate at the same scale in the camps. As Slim highlights, NGOs have a central need to generate their legitimacy through tangible outcomes and the demonstration of effectiveness. Yet emphasising funding and services within discourse about irregular migration and trafficking can displace other interpretations of the crisis, including those which emphasise the Rohingya people’s own political struggles for legitimacy. And if the cause of human trafficking and irregular migration is framed by international agencies primarily as a lack of services, this can undermine longer term struggles for the Rohingya to gain political status. Longer term solutions to the crisis are impossible without shifts in political legitimacy for the Rohingya.
In around one third of sector reports and media articles, there is a different discourse about the causes of irregular migration and trafficking, one which emphasises the rights of Rohingya. Most prominent in these articles is the lack of work rights for the Rohingya, who cannot legally work, own property, or buy or sell goods and services. Informally, there are small businesses within the camps, trading with local populations, some engagement in cash for work and community volunteers, yet there are few opportunities for livelihood development. As early as 2018, the International Organisation for Migration argued that without ‘access to proper livelihood opportunities, people frequently fall victim to exploitation while seeking labour for survival’. Similarly, a Save the Children staff member in Bangladesh said, ‘I see that limited livelihood options and growing insecurity in the camps are major reasons why many Rohingya youths take the risk of migrating irregularly.’
Some reports and articles included reference to both the issues of global funding cuts and stress on services, and the lack of rights to work and movement. Yet whilst both discourses address the problem of irregular migration and human trafficking, they are also, in some respects, in tension. The discourse concentrating on the problem of humanitarian funding cuts and lack of services clearly serves the interests of aid agencies who want to maintain their program funding and services and therefore their legitimacy in the context of refugee camps in Bangladesh. This discourse about lack of funding and services as the primary driver of human trafficking and irregular migration among the Rohingya is also convenient for the Bangladesh government, who are seeking to avoid the provision of work and movement rights. Thus, the immediate interests of aid agencies and the Bangladesh government are aligned in emphasising the need for funding and services, rather than a long-term political solution. In contrast, the discourse relating to the need for rights for the Rohingya, including rights to work and movement, challenges the position of the Bangladesh government, and some aid agencies, by emphasising the long-term solution of reducing irregular migration through a rights-based approach.
The crucial issue is a lack of political status for the Rohingya
Between various discourses on human trafficking and irregular migration of the Rohingya, there are tensions in relation to the legitimacy of different actors. International humanitarian agencies are facing a global crisis of funding which threatens their organisational operations and their legitimacy. Yet emphasising lack of services and funding as the primary driver of human trafficking and irregular migration can displace the crucial issue of a lack of political status for Rohingya people. For the Rohingya, as the largest stateless population in the world, addressing political participation and rights, either through refugee status in Bangladesh or citizenship in Myanmar, remains critical.
The Rohingya camps in Bangladesh cannot be maintained indefinitely. Either donor humanitarian support, or Bangladeshi government patience, will eventually wane. Recognition as citizens in Myanmar and voluntary repatriation to Myanmar with the assurance of protection and inclusion would be the most durable solution for the struggles of the Rohingya but given ongoing military rule and aggression in Myanmar this outcome is unlikely in the near term.
In the present context, it is crucial that the Rohingya people in Bangladesh are given legal status, including rights to work. With neither citizenship nor rights as refugees, the Rohingya people have few options available to them and so issues such as irregular migration and human trafficking, along with other associated regional upheavals, will likely continue.
Authors: Naim Ahamed & Dr Tamas Wells.
Image: Rohingya refugees line up at a store to buy food, 2018. Credit: EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid/Flickr.
