Rohingya
Children’s Education Blocked at Every Turn
Scores of
children, most born in refugee camps created in the early 1990s, have been
kicked out of schools in Bangladesh because they are ethnic Rohingya. It is an
impossible situation. Bangladesh’s government forbids the Rohingya, as well as
aid organizations, from setting up accredited schools in the camps where the
children live, and also blocks the kids from attending Bangladeshi schools. All
because the government wants to treat the Rohingya as temporary migrants.
Some of
these children and their families resorted to buying Bangladeshi identity
documents as the only way to secure a secondary school education and their
future. Now, the authorities are targeting and expelling those students.
Government policy is leaving Rohingya children without options. Human Rights
Watch researcher Bill Van Esveld spoke to some former students who had their
right to education ripped away by a government edict. Here are just two of
their stories:
“Rahim
R.”
Holding
back tears, Rahim tried to compose himself with deep breaths so he could talk
about what losing his education meant to him.
“My heart
is being broken. … [T]he authorities knew I was Rohingya. I don’t know what
happened this year.”
Barely
18, Rahim wore his school uniform to be interviewed – a white-collared shirt
and navy trousers, slightly rolled up at the ankle. The outfit must remind him
of the painful day in January – a few days into what would have been his final
year of school – when the head of his school received a letter from the
government demanding all Rohingya children be expelled.
The note
was read aloud in every class, Rahim said, and all the Rohingya children were
forced to stand up in front of their classmates.
“I felt
so very shy at that moment. I went and hid and cried.”
Rahim was
born in Bangladesh in 2001 – 10 years after his parents fled Myanmar. When he
was 4, he started going to lessons in the camp where he lived with his parents
and siblings. But after completing class 5, the last year of primary education,
he discovered there were no more classes offered in the camp. What’s more,
education in the camps is unaccredited. This means kids who get through the
lower classes receive a certificate that doesn’t give them access to any
secondary education.
This is
what happened to Rahim. When he left the camp’s education system, he realized
none of the Bangladeshi schools outside the camp saw his five years of
education as valid. He was stuck.
“As long
as I had a dream to become a doctor and serve my own community, I had to look
for other [school] options.”
Even though
he was just 9 at the time, Rahim persisted. He managed to repeat class 5 in a
Bangladeshi school, which allowed him to take an official Primary School
Certificate exam. He scored an A+ and was admitted to a junior high school.
After another three years he got another A+ in his Junior School Certificate at
the end of class 8. After that he had to change schools yet again so he could
study science.
“There
were only five students out of the whole [class] who got an A+, so the teacher
[of a different school] agreed to admit me into class 9.”
After
years of struggle, repeating classes, and constant pressure to perform, Rahim’s
goal finally felt within grasp. But on January 28, his hopes were dashed.
Now he
teaches his younger brothers and sisters, as well as 20 or so other children in
the camp in a makeshift school. He still holds on to his dream of being a
doctor, because, he says, his grandfather died because he didn’t get the
medical care he needed.
“I was
very little then. … My mother taught me that it’s your duty to serve your
nation.”
“Yusef
Y.”
Yusef’s
hands are calloused from labor and darkened by the sun. They don’t match his
delicate features and heart-shaped face.
“They are
very hard,” he said, looking at his palms. “I’m always working.” The roughness
comes from the brickfields where Yusef works, initially so he could afford
school, but now because he is no longer allowed to go to classes.
Yusef’s
family fled to Bangladesh, where he was born, in 1991. He had studied Burmese,
English, and math – the only subjects available – in his camp’s “learning
center” for four years. Then, in 2007, the Bangladeshi government enforced a
new curriculum in the camps – an English translation of the Bangladesh school
curriculum, which it had previously banned for Rohingya kids.
The
government’s flip-flopping on what is allowed and required of the camp schools
has led to many children dropping out, either from frustration at being forced
to repeat classes because of the new curriculum or financial need. Yusef’s
family couldn’t afford for him to repeat four years of school so he had to drop
out for two years.
“I
started working in a local brickfield beside my camp. I still work there. I got
some money and I got admitted to a Bangladeshi school.”
When he
was 9-years-old, after he passed the entrance exam, Yusef paid his own
admission fee to the school using the money he had saved. When he wasn’t
working, he had studied independently during the two years since dropping out
of the camp school. After getting in to the school, he walked there and back
every day so he could get his education.
“Other
students were asking me why [I was walking]. I said I was exercising. But this
wasn’t true,” Yusef said, choking back tears. “I didn’t have any money [for a
ride].”
Yusef did
well in all his exams and was promoted through the school system. But in
January, the government note about Rohingya arrived at his school, and he was
expelled.
Until
then, Yusef had wanted to focus his studies on humanities so he could help his
parents’ native Myanmar, the country he has never known.
“Although
I have never been able to go to Myanmar or even see it, we are Myanmar
nationals,” he said. “I thought I would become a leader in my community.”
Even now,
Yusef takes that idea seriously. When he learned that other Rohingya children
had been expelled, he formed part of a demonstration in front of the local
United Nations refugee agency office, asking for a meeting so education could
be brought back to the camps.
“I
thought, fine, I was expelled but now all the Rohingya were kicked out of
school.”
Many of
the schools Human Rights Watch visited in Bangladesh were rundown and
overcrowded, so there is a very real need to improve the situation for all
children in the country. But by restricting the education Rohingya kids are
allowed to obtain in the camps, and at the same time forbidding them from going
to Bangladeshi schools, the government is denying them their right to education
and denying them a future.
Now Yusef
is back in the brickfields, and also working as a wage laborer for farmers and
at fisheries. Whenever he can, he reads books in Bangla on his phone to
continue his studies on his own. He also worries about his siblings, four
brothers and three sisters, six of whom are illiterate.
“We are
always thankful to the Bangladesh government. They gave us shelter [but] we
just want our education.”
Source: HRW
Source: HRW