The Rohingya crisis remains one of the most pressing humanitarian crises the world is dealing with currently, with over 1.1 million Rohingya refugees housed in Bangladesh. Yet, the question that demands to be asked is: How much longer?
By now, five years since the mass exodus of Rohingya refugees from Rakhine State, there is no questioning the exemplary job Bangladesh has done of acting as a refuge for the Rohingya community in times of their need. Bangladesh stepped up to show its humanitarian side when all other nations failed to do so.
However, it is important to recognize our own limitations in terms of extending a helping hand to others, especially as we work tirelessly to develop as a nation.
The refugee camps are slowly becoming exceedingly dangerous for the residents, with drugs, internal conflicts, and a myriad of other criminal activities on the rise. Despite the government's best efforts to maintain a level of peace within the community, and provide them with the basic facilities necessary for survival, it is clear that things are getting out of hand.
None of this is Bangladesh’s fault; we were never supposed to -- with the limited resources at our disposal and a very large population of our own -- have been dealing with this crisis for this long; a crisis that only seems to have exacerbated, owing to the gross lack of action on the part of the international community and the Myanmar regime.
The government has exhausted too many of its resources to resolve a crisis that should have been a bigger concern for the world at large. To say it is unfair to a developing country like ours to be taking full responsibility for a crisis of this magnitude would be the grossest understatement.
Not only that, but it is also an injustice to the refugees, who are the ones who continue to suffer the most, who just want to go home.
If there continues to be a lack of substantial support and immediate action from the international community to safely send the Rohingya back home, this will soon lead to a much bigger issue than what Bangladesh is capable of dealing with. And we cannot let our own country suffer as a result of it.
