In November 2024, Bangladesh’s Foreign Affairs Adviser Touhid Hossain publicly acknowledged that successive governments had stifled the emergence of credible Rohingya leadership. “Rohingya leadership needed to grow, but we did not allow it,” he said, adding that the leadership vacuum was filled by “criminal elements” and that supporting “legitimate Rohingya leadership” was now “better late than never.”
It was a rare diagnosis from inside the government, and it signalled a policy turn -- Dhaka would move from suppressing internal organization to curating it. The remark was delivered at a national dialogue on the Rohingya crisis in Dhaka on November 23, 2024 and reported in the Dhaka Tribune the same day. The subtext was blunt. The state would now midwife a class of representatives it could live with and project abroad -- preferably in time for the next round of international diplomacy. Within days of the completion of the elections, Dhaka’s National Security Adviser Khalilur Rahman confirmed the point. The new “voices” will be carried to the UN’s September 30 conference as “indirect” representation of the Rohingya.
Fast forward to mid-July 2025 and the contours of that plan snap into view in Cox’s Bazar. The Business Standard provided the details -- the camps had been carved into eight electoral zones, with a first round of voting starting at 9 a.m. on July 16 in Camps 14-16. The objective, it said, was to create a civil society committee that would speak for the Rohingya “to the global community.” Note the phrasing that always gives the game away -- this is not primarily about accountable representation inside the camps; it is about optics and interlocution outside them.
The figures matter. Roughly 3,500 pre-selected “representatives” would vote to choose around 500 councillors, who would then pick a core committee of 30-40 for a three-year term. The structure also includes a rotating panel of presidents, and even at the outset an organizer acknowledged the possibility that some seats may be filled not by ballots but by “selection,” depending on the number of candidates.
The role of the state is not arm’s-length; it is supervisory. The Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC) chief was explicit with The Business Standard. He said that Rohingya organizers “approached us for permission,” the government “approved it,” and officials would remain “only as observers.” In a securitized space where movement, association, and speech are constrained by design, this assurance of “observation only” is hardly neutral. The machinery of permission shapes the outcome long before a single vote is cast.
An “observer” who licences the very existence of the process is not a bystander; they are an architect determining the very structure of the organisation. The fact that polling is “conducted by Rohingya leaders” says little about autonomy when those leaders are themselves operating under the watchful eye, and the practical veto, of state authorities.
Two voting accounts and a profile of an elected president illustrate the process as experienced on the ground.
Report 1, Camp 26 (Teknaf): Security at the door, selection inside
An observer report from Teknaf (Camp 26) describes a voting session held on August 14 in a community centre run by an NGO, with roughly forty voters seated in a room about 20m by 10m. Officials from the RRRC sat inside; APBn (Armed Police Battalion) and intelligence personnel were stationed at the door as “security.” No ballot papers were used - except reportedly for the women’s group. Nominee lists were drawn up on arrival, yet several names appeared to have been pre-selected before the vote. Category seats were allocated to students, teachers, imams, doctors, youth and elders; five students were chosen locally, but only one would advance after consolidation. Those “elected or selected” are to be transported to Kutupalong for a final round. Seventeen women voted in Teknaf overall; the Teknaf area had about 150 voters in total.
Report 2, Camp-1 West: Invitation-only, consensus first
At Camp-1 West on August 10, voting ran from 9:30AM to 4:30PM at the CIC office on an invitation-only, pre-verified list. Fourteen “category” groups were used, with two or three nominees taken from each depending on group size; eligible participants were called in advance, required to show their smart card, and checked by a CIC staffer against name, phone and FCN before entry. Security and intelligence officers were present. Most outcomes were decided by “mutual understanding” within the category; only when that failed did the commissioner issue black ballot papers for a secret vote, which the commissioner then counted and announced. The commissioner’s team comprised Rohingya community members. Apparently, 798 people functioned as both voters and candidates, from whom a smaller set of nominees was produced.
Profile: Jahangir Alam and a contested presidency
Jahangir Alam, originally from Kamaung Seik (Fakira Bazar) in northern Maungdaw, is now one of five rotating presidents. Community accounts portray him as a former “thabbey” (informant) who worked with Myanmar’s military-intelligence in the 2010s, allegedly facilitating false accusations that led to arrests. He was later appointed a head majhi in Cox’s Bazar, reportedly sent to jail by CiC Pavel for a period after 2017, and subsequently re-emerged in local institutions, including a community school, while maintaining ties to contentions figures like Dil Mohammed. These allegations, some relating to the 2017 violence around Kamaung Seik against Hindus, remain unadjudicated and are contested; officials have not issued a public explanation of his past detention. His elevation shows a core weakness of the current model -- an indirect, state-sanctioned process can just as easily legitimize divisive figures as exclude them.
One of the most visible mobilizers, Dil Mohammed, spent weeks holding rallies and urging a bloc vote. Yet, just before polling, officials ruled him ineligible as a “new arrival,” closing the door on a figure whose notoriety and connections had begun to unsettle Dhaka. The Burma Human Rights Network warns leadership with "close links to the State Administration Council, Bangladesh’s security forces, or Rohingya armed actors" risks reinforcing internal divisions and endangering civilians. Jahangir, one of the elected leaders, had been closely associated with Dil Mohammed, underscoring the very weakness the BHRN identifies.
Where are the women?
The process appears almost entirely male. There are no published gender quotas at any tier, and several categories (imams, elders, majhis) are structurally male-dominated. In Teknaf, just 17 of roughly 150 voters (about 11%) were women, and in Camp-1 West the invitation list was not disclosed by gender. Women in Teknaf reportedly used paper ballots while most men settled outcomes by “mutual understanding”, an asymmetry that underlines how easily a consensus model can sideline those with less social power. Without hard, enforced quotas at voter, nominee, councillor, and core-committee levels, a three-stage funnel will all but eliminate women from decision-making. Earlier humanitarian pilots proved the opposite is possible; this model chose not to try.
So, what have we got?
What we have is a narrow, indirect, government-sanctioned selection that produces a tiny apex body claiming to speak for nearly 1.1-1.2 million people. Even taking the press account at face value, the electorate is about 3,500 people -- approximately 0.32% of the population. The final leadership slate of 30-40 would then be around 0.003% of the whole. Those numbers should make anyone wary of the word “mandate.” They point to a curated consultative mechanism designed to be legible to donors and diplomats, not a representative institution designed to be accountable to camp residents.
Not camp-wide, not consent-wide
Despite the branding, this exercise is not camp-wide in practice. Registered refugees (from the 1990s) declined to take part. Refugees in Nayapara and Kutupalong Registered Camps say they refused to host the poll and blocked organizers from proceeding. On Bhasan Char, no election took place at all.
Those in the registered camps who rejected the process gave consistent reasons. There was no clear briefing; no consultation before an “election commissioner” from a “non-registered” camp arrived to discuss an election; no visible UNHCR endorsement or presence; and a widespread belief that the new structure was being assembled to advance repatriation under outside influence. The name “Dil Mohammed” was mentioned in several interviews.
Engineered apathy and familiar faces
Refugees across all camps expressed indifference because they expect no change in daily life. This was a verdict on a process they neither shaped nor understood. Voters and even successful candidates often did not know who was standing until the night before or found out only at the polling room. Several newly elected figures were unclear about the mandate they had just acquired. When information, lists and terms of reference are withheld or improvised, apathy is predictable.
Mv Sawyedollah, publicly styled as the “first president,” has long been a prominent individual within the Forcibly Diplaced Myanmar National – Representaitive Committee (FDMN-RC), a committee widely described by analysts as a creation of the RRRC and Bangladeshi intelligence forces. Sawyedollah also previously belonged to the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights (ARSPH), the organization led by Mohibullah. His role has been to amplify government messaging around repatriation. His emergence at the apex of the new body shows a clear through-line -- rather than introducing genuine elected representation, the state is simply elevating its familiar intermediaries into a more marketable frame.
Same actors, new label.
Engineered for New York
Bangladesh's national security adviser has been explicit about the purpose of the Rohingya camp "elections." At an August 17 briefing for diplomats, he directly tied the camp-based "stakeholder" process to the UN's September 30 conference in New York. Rahman stated that since the Rohingya "are not UN members … someone has to take their voice. So we are doing that in this kind of process."
He framed repatriation as the only "permanent solution," romanticizing the conditions awaiting returnees by saying they have "very fertile land … enough fish … they have no need in the world." His remarks reveal a clear strategy -- to manufacture a Rohingya civil society organization that can be paraded as "the Rohingya voice" at the UN and present its presence as consent for repatriation, all while claiming it is "taking their voice." The process is an instrumental exercise in international optics, not genuine representation.
The ‘pragmatism’ defence -- and why it fails
The "pragmatism" defence -- that something is better than nothing -- collapses when you consider how the process was assembled. The state defines the zones, determines the categories and the numbers to be elected from each category, approves the whole exercise, and positions itself as the guarantor of order while restricting civic space. The organizers even concede that “selection” may replace elections in places. The press rollout is calibrated for international gaze -- first-ever internal polls, rotating presidencies, global platforms. It is a choreography aimed at producing the appearance of pluralism without surrendering control. The result is a committee built for a podium, not one accountable to its people.
There is also the baseline problem of who designs legitimacy tests. Touhid’s critique in 2024 was that policy suffocated legitimate leaders and allowed predatory ones to flourish. The cure on offer is not an open arena in which Rohingya constituencies can test and choose their own leaders; it is an RRRC-supervised funnel that delivers a pliant, approvable committee. That may meet Dhaka’s diplomatic needs but it does not meet the needs of a dispersed, traumatized population to whom these leaders are theoretically accountable. If the objective is to end the dominance of informal, coercive power brokers, then the task is to build a process that can stand up to them.
If seats can slide from “election” to “selection” based on candidate availability, the process invites pre-sorting by those who already wield influence: Camp-in-Charge, majhis, criminal networks, and other power-brokers. In a context where intimidation is a known feature, the absence of independent monitors, published rolls, and a clear appeals mechanism is a big oversight. Actually, it is a design choice that privileges manageability over legitimacy. Announcing a three-year term and a rotating presidency does nothing to fix the democratic deficit upstream.
Previous, humanitarian-led exercises showed a better model is possible, using direct voting and gender quotas to ensure visible participation. This current, narrower attempt fulfills the "better late than never" promise only on terms that serve the state's interests. The government wants leaders who are controllable, while the community needs leaders who are chosen and removable. The gulf between these two goals will become painfully obvious the first time the committee is asked to bless an unpopular policy.
What’s at stake
All of this matters because the body produced by this exercise will be deployed rhetorically. In donor briefings, at multilateral events, and in press notes about “consultations with Rohingya civil society,” and especially about repatriation, it will become the proof point that “the community has spoken.” But if the committee cannot credibly claim to represent women, youth, minority sub-groups, or even a minimally broad electorate, it will not blunt coercion inside the camps. This exercise simply moves unaccountability from the camps to a diplomatic conference room.
The only way to build a credible leadership is through a genuinely open and transparent process, with universal suffrage and independent monitoring. Such a process, though it may seem costly or complex, is crucial for fostering human dignity, empowering the community with a voice, and ensuring accountability from service providers. Without that, this is not a cure for the leadership vacuum; it is a rebrand of FDMN-RC and existing control mechanisms.
Shafiur Rahman is a journalist and documentary filmmaker focusing on the politics of refugee management in South and Southeast Asia. He writes the Rohingya Refugee News newsletter.
