Archive October 1, 2025

As fighting continues in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, members of the Rohingya community who fled violence have addressed a UN General Assembly (UNGA) conference to bring attention to the suffering of the persecuted Muslim minority.

The founder of the Rohingya Student Network, Maung Sawyeddollah, said to his fellow Rohingya on Tuesday in a live-streamed speech in New York City’s vast UNGA hall, “You are not forgotten. You might think that the world cannot see your suffering. “Rohingya, I see you.”

The Rohingya genocide was exposed more than eight years ago, and this message is now directed at world leaders and the UN. Where is Rohingya justice at stake? Where”? asked Sawyeddollah.

The bodies of several people who he claimed were killed in an aerial attack by Myanmar’s rebel Arakan Army in August 2024 were then displayed in a photo of their bodies in a river.

After fleeing Myanmar in 2017, Sawyeddollah, a student, said, “These are not isolated cases; they are part of a systematic campaign.”

Why doesn’t the Arakan Army prevent these heinous atrocities? he inquired.

The Women’s Peace Network-Myanmar executive director Wai Wai Nu, who also addressed the high-level UNGA meeting, stated to Al Jazeera that the event was a “historic moment” and that she hoped it would “return the attention to the UN on the issue of Rohingya.”

She said she and Wai Wai Nu spoke on the sidelines of the conference about the issue of blocking the flow of humanitarian aid to Rakhine State, where Rohingya communities are located.

The conference is worth it, she said, “if we get this.”

“We need to protect Rohingya in the state of Rakhine.”

This morning, I made my opening remarks at the #UN General Assembly conference on the Rohingya and other minorities in Myanmar.

I urged ending impunity, promoting justice, and addressing root causes for long-lasting solutions. #UNGA80 #Myanmar pic. twitter.com/PtSqCf2afM

In their speeches, many member states also stressed or put a spotlight on advancing justice and accountability, according to Nu.

However, she continued, the UN event also provided proof that “lacking leadership and coordination, including in the ASEAN region,” a group of states in Southeast Asia, is essential for a “coherent and cohesive approach” to solving the Rohingya crisis.

She added that a “global arms embargo” and targeted sanctions against Myanmar and “all the perpetrators, including military and other armed sectors, including Arakan Army,” were both important for the Rohingya to be put in place to protect them.

Massive aid cuts

Chef de Cabinet Earle Courtenay Rattray, who spoke on behalf of the UN secretary-general, told the meeting of the member states that “massive aid cuts” have worsened the situation for the Rohingya, including more than 1 million people who have fled ethnic cleansing by the military in Myanmar and who have sought refuge in neighboring Bangladesh.

“In Bangladesh, 150, 000 Rohingya have escaped in the past 18 months alone, thanks to generously keeping its borders open and providing them with refuge,” Rattray said.

Eight years into the crisis, Bangladesh’s chief adviser, Muhammad Yunus, claimed his country is struggling to continue assisting Rohingya refugees despite Rattray’s claim that Bangladesh has shown “remarkable hospitality and generosity.”

The Rohingya’s plight continues eight years after the genocide began, according to Yunus, who co-hosted the meeting and a subsequent summit in Cox’s Bazar last month in an effort to raise awareness of the Rohingya’s situation in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is a victim of the crisis, Yunus claimed.

He claimed that “we are forced to bear enormous financial, social, and environmental costs.”

The only peaceful course of action is to begin their repatriation as funding declines.

He continued, “The Rohingya have consistently stated their desire to return home,” adding that “those who recently crossed into Bangladesh to escape conflict must be allowed to repatriate.”

Given his own country’s “developmental challenges, including unemployment and poverty,” Yunus added, Bangladesh, unlike Thailand, was unable to grant work rights to Rohingya.

One of the speakers thanked Bangladesh and Thailand for welcoming Rohingya refugees was Charles Harder, the special envoy for the best future generations.

He also made the announcement that Bangladesh would receive “more than $60 million in assistance” from the US, which he claimed would depend on Bangladesh making “meaningful” changes to allow for employment.

However, he claimed that funding for refugees in Bangladesh was not “a burden the United States will bear indefinitely.”

According to Harder, “It is long past time for other governments and actors in the area to come up with sustainable solutions for Rohingya.”

Aside from the United Kingdom, which announced $ 36 million in aid to Rohingya refugees, about 50 other UN member states also gave speeches on Tuesday.

The Gambia’s minister of justice, Dawda Jallow, also addressed the gathering, expressing his nation’s desire for an international court of justice (ICJ) decision “soon after” an oral hearing scheduled for January of next year in relation to the case in which Myanmar is accused of genocide against its Rohingya population.

“We almost six years ago filed our case,” the statement read. We are now getting ready for the oral argument on the merits of this case, which the court has scheduled for mid-January 2026,” Jallow said.

After last-ditch attempts by lawmakers to pass a spending bill failed, the US government has partially ceased operations.

After Democrats and Republicans in the US Senate rejected competing stopgap proposals, funding to keep the federal government operating expired on Wednesday at 00:01 EDT (04:01 GMT).

The US government has partially stopped operations more than a dozen times since 1980, but President Donald Trump’s threats to use the funding gap to significantly lessen the size of the public sector have raised the possibility of even greater disruption than during previous shutdowns.

Trump warned reporters at the White House on Tuesday that he might use the shutdown to engage in “bad” behavior for Democrats.

Trump said, “We can do things that are irreversible, bad for them, and irreversible by them, like cutting out large numbers of people’s out, cutting things they like, cutting programs they like,” adding that “a lot of good” can come from government shutdowns.

Due to the shutdown, which is the first time this kind of funding has been lapsed since 2018, some government services that are deemed non-essential will stop, including the publication of important economic data and small business loan approvals.

Essential employees will continue working, but they won’t receive pay for the duration of the shutdown, such as law enforcement officers, military personnel, and air traffic controllers.

Social Security and food assistance will continue to be distributed.

Trump has threatened to fire “a lot of people” despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of federal employees were placed on temporary leave and received back pay when they returned to work despite previous shutdowns.

Trump said, “And they’re Democrats, they’re going to be Democrats.”

The threats were “typical of President Trump’s strong-arm tactics,” according to Richard Painter, the chief ethics lawyer at the White House under former President George W. Bush.

If there is a shutdown, Painter told Al Jazeera, “He is threatening to terminate federal employees.”

He might be able to do some of his threats, but the majority of them are not authorized by Congress, including ejecting federal employees while protecting civilian employees.

Following weeks of debate over how to keep the government open, Democrats and Republicans have come to grips with how to close the government on Wednesday.

Democrats earlier this month objected to a stopgap spending bill that was proposed by Republicans to allow the government to operate for nine more weeks, arguing that the bill should include provisions to expand healthcare coverage, such as changing the Affordable Care Act’s (also known as Obamacare) and repealing the Medicaid cuts that were inserted into Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Republicans have argued that in future bipartisan negotiations, such as those involving healthcare, should be addressed separately.

Senate Republicans voted 55 to 45 in favor of a stopgap bill that would have extended funding until November 21 in an effort to avoid a shutdown on Tuesday, which was unsuccessful.

The bill, which required 60 votes to pass, was supported by two Democrats: John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Angus King, an independent from Maine.

Republicans in turn rebuffed a Democratic bill that would have increased healthcare spending by more than $1 trillion and extended funding until the end of October.

No Republicans were present, so that vote went wrong, 47-53.

According to Gerald Epstein, co-director of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), “I think it is impossible to predict what Trump will do,” he said.

The Dems “won’t cave,” say they? Not for a while, I’m sure of it.

Republicans and Democrats exchanged blame for the impasse following the failed elections.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer remarked, “Republicans are plunging us into a government shutdown rather than fixing our healthcare crisis.”

Republicans allegedly voted to “hurt everyday Americans,” according to Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune hoped that enough Democrats would support his party’s “clean” bill in a follow-up vote on Wednesday.

“All of this was unneeded.” In an interview with Fox News, Thune claimed that all of this was done to please their left-wing political base.

The US government has shut down 15 times since 1980, including the current funding lapse, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.