Language is slippery, often subversive. When Burma became Myanmar in 1989, this was the ruling junta’s most overt disavowal of the colonial past. In striking out Britain’s name for the nation, the military attempted to put forth a new image.
The old name, derived from the dominant Bamar ethnic group, was replaced in a sort of semantic trick. It suggested the nation, this new Myanmar, welcomed all ethnic groups composing the vast country.
Junta control would go on to ebb and surge amid the stuttering thrust of “true democracy” -- as it does, as it will -- but that new name, the national veneer, the nom de plume to dissemble the nom de guerre, was largely accepted. Most of the world today indeed recognizes the name “Myanmar.”
Manipulations of language have proven effective tools for the authority of Myanmar. The explosive consequences of these actions are laid bare in decades of ethnic cleansing and genocide of the minority Rohingya, over a million of whom now seek refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh.
While linguistic exploitations by Myanmar state perpetrators have been scrutinized, however, a parallel adaptation of language concerning the refugees by humanitarian systems and host nations has been largely overlooked, despite this language increasingly compromising the welfare of the Rohingya.
Re-evaluating the standard lexicon of the aid system now is critical. Bangladesh presides for the first time over the 81st session of the UN General Assembly which opened in September and has high-level conferences and general debate scheduled this week.
At the helm of the UNGA is foreign minister Khalilur Rahman, selected in a historic election this past June, who was previously the High Representative on Rohingya Issues during the interim government of Bangladesh.
This is an unprecedented position with high potentiality, given Khalilur Rahman’s expertise (coupled with Bangladesh’s election of new Prime Minister Tarique Rahman) but will the old rhetoric staging the refugees’ condition -- ineffective, often counterproductive -- be finally retired?
Sweeping language abounded in the listed objectives for the UN’s first high-level conference on the Rohingya and other minorities of Myanmar which took place in September 2025. The UN organ published aims of the conference ahead of last year’s meeting, including to “review the overall [Rohingya] crisis and address its root causes,” the aspirational outcome of which being “a comprehensive, innovative and concrete plan for a sustainable resolution of the crisis.”
The head of Bangladesh’s interim government at that time, Muhammad Yunus, put forth an address at that meeting which included a seven point plan concerning the Rohingya in Bangladesh. The entirety of this address, however, did not include the word “refugee” to describe those displaced under conditions of war and genocide.
And though this was yet another appeal by the Bangladesh administration to the global community for aid concerning the Rohingya, the displaced population in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh (composing the largest camp system in the world) are still not recognized de jure by the Bangladesh government via the term “refugees.”
Instead, they are designated “Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals” (FDMN). Bangladesh also continues to abstain from ratifying the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, a decision that allows the nation to circumvent certain mechanisms of international refugee protection frameworks and law.
Systemic manufactures disguised as intrinsic flaw
Yunus also stated during that September 2025 UN meeting: “Bangladesh is a victim of the crisis. We are forced to bear huge financial, social, and environmental costs. Criminal activities…threaten our social fabric.”
The portrayal of Bangladesh as a “victim” of a crisis, closely juxtaposed with the formulaic generalization of the Rohingya as “criminal,” is also a calculated linguistic -- ideological -- construction.
Notably, the Rohingya are largely financially supported by international donor groups and other foreign governments (covering over 90% of the Rohingya Joint Response Plan in 2025), and Bangladesh has in fact experienced local economic development in Cox’s Bazar from the influx of foreign aid and personnel.
Moreover, Bangladesh bars the Rohingya from legal higher education or employment opportunities, so the refugees are often forced into markets which exploit Rohingya workers for further economic gain.
The language of criminality as it pertains to the Rohingya, then, presents a sustained and systemic manufacture as an intrinsic attribute. Bangladesh has in fact extracted a certain legitimacy and foothold through perpetuated Rohingya containment.
Furthermore, the language of a helpless saviour, a victim of an unsavory population, as reinforced by Bangladesh’s highest office, has been co-opted by other host nations to devastating effect.
Harms of international aid community language
The characterization of the refugees in the greater international aid community must also be assessed. The words “burden” and “burden-sharing” (a term which has its genesis at the inception of the UNHCR) are near-universal phraseology for deliverables related to refugee solutions development.
Though this language has been modified at times through the expanded term “burden and responsibility sharing” (this term appearing in documents concerning the high-level UN conference on the Rohingya), the diction invariably confounds sustainable solutions development.
Expediency, asymmetrical compromise, and generalization become the dominant undercurrents of conversation, often influencing safety and longevity considerations. The refugee community of Cox’s Bazar thus become the load to cast off, an onus of little apparent value (humanistic, capitalistic, all that lies between).
Host nations certainly require assistance of international bodies to manage massive refugee populations. These bodies must be cognizant of the unintended effects of modern aid solicitation language.
A major component of this aid solicitation language is made manifest by the international community’s recurring description (see Yunus’ aforementioned speech) of the Rohingya refugees’ condition as a “crisis.”
The hackneyed term is somewhat a misnomer when describing the state of refugees. The connotations of “crisis” elicit ideas of acute, natural phenomena: Successions of events by which victims and witnesses alike are vulnerable, with this state of “crisis” materializing no obvious perpetrators.
In recent headlines relating to the Rohingya, ample mention is made of a humanitarian disaster, a population that is aid-dependent. Less emphasis and fewer details concerning the Myanmar authority are expounded upon, leaving the refugees an abstraction isolated from the political and historical events which made them refugees.
Retiring a philosophy of rhetoric
The first high-level conference on the Rohingya at the UN concluded last year with further aid commitments from a few nations, though funding remains significantly short of targets. The issues facing Rohingya in Bangladesh also persist, with no real success in developing repatriation pathways or resettlement policies for the refugees.
Notably, however, there is fertile ground for reform at the moment. Bangladesh has transitioned from its interim government to a new administration on the wings of renewed democratic process and promise for inclusive national change. Moreover, with Khalilur Rahman at the helm of the UNGA, he will oversee numerous agendas, including the old call for a “sustainable resolution” for the ongoing displacement and genocide of the Rohingya.
There will be speeches insisting that promises and pledges translate this time to “real action,” and by this these parties will gesture to policy change. Inaction stems, though, not only from empty words. The recycling of an old lexicon, an entire philosophy of influential rhetoric, must be retired.
Farihah Ahmed received her MFA in Writing from Columbia University. She is the founder and director of RoVena, a global civil society organization which advocates for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.