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Prior to a high-level conference on the Rohingya refugee crisis in September, Bangladesh will host a two-day conference on the persecuted Rohingya community in Cox’s Bazar.

Eight years after more than a million Rohingya, many of whom are now stateless, were forced to flee Myanmar and find refuge there, the meeting, which was organized by Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was held. They fled a military operation in Myanmar, which was deemed a war crime and genocide after thousands of Rohingya were killed.

According to Kamal Hossain, chairman of the Forcefully Displaced Myanmar National Representative Committee, a Rohingya advocacy organization, “Rohingyas have had no direct dialogue with international bodies, the Bangladeshi government, local communities, or Myanmar.” This conference serves as a step toward solutions, according to the organizers.

Who will be there?

The conference was inaugurated on Sunday by Bangladesh’s High Representative for the Rohingya issue and national security adviser Khalilur Rahman.

The meeting, which is being held in Bangladesh’s interim government, is expected to feature Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus, the country’s interim government’s leader.

Foreign ministers, UN agency representatives, international envoys, and officials from Bangladesh’s overseas missions will be among the other delegates.

The largest refugee camps in the world, where a delegation led by Rahman, will also travel to meet with the residents, who have been increasingly reliant on food and medicine.

The conference is being held because Cox’s Bazar’s 1.5 million refugees rely on handouts for most of their needs, and aid has been cut.

They can’t afford any fish or chicken because food rations have been reduced from $12 a month to $8 a month, or basically half, since the beginning of this year. Tony Cheng, a reporter for Cox’s Bazar, reported on Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng. “Basically, it’s just pulses and rice.”

He claimed that Yunus has organized the conference to ensure that Rohingya are “not forgotten.”

He expressed his hope that some real solutions to the Rohingya’s situation will be found over the course of the next few days, and that the Rohingya don’t continue to live in these camps that are forgotten by the rest of the world, Cheng said.

What purpose does the conference serve?

This is the first time the Rohingya will have the opportunity to be heard, says Nay San Lwin, co-chairman of the Arakan Rohingya National Council.

The UN High-Level Conference on the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities, which will take place in New York on September 30th, is where the significance of this conference lies, he said.

In December, Nay San Lwin added, “There may be another UN meeting] in Qatar.” We hope that these meetings, which are taking place at a very high level, will at least lead to a resolution for the Rohingya.

He continued, “I think these processes can help the Rohingya find a permanent solution.” Our ultimate objective is to return to Myanmar’s full rights, dignity, and protection.

What recent UN statements have been made regarding Rohingya?

Prior to the UN meeting on Sunday and Monday, Myanmar’s Rohingya minority was requested citizenship, equality, and security.

For decades, Myanmar’s predominantly Muslim Rohingya have been targeted. 90% of Rohingya’s estimated 3. 5 million worldwide live as refugees and undocumented immigrants, according to estimates.

We are left to wonder when the enduring suffering caused by these and ongoing crimes will end, especially for the long-suffering Rohingya community as we approach the end of another year without justice for the violence that started on August 25, 2017, in Myanmar, according to UN human rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence.

At a Geneva news briefing, he said, “The end of impunity and ensuring the Rohingya’s rights to security, citizenship, and equality are essential for breaking the cycle of violence.”

Has recently changed the situation?

Since November 2023, Laurence noted that the Rohingya who are still living in Myanmar’s Rakhine State have experienced a sharp decline in both human rights and humanitarian conditions.

The most recent conflict in Myanmar, which resulted from a 2021 coup that removed a democratically elected government and established a new repressive military regime, saw intense suffering in the impoverished state.

According to Laurence, both the military and the Arakan Army’s local ethnic fighters have committed and continue to commit grave atrocity crimes against the Rohingya with impunity.

Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is urging the international community to increase aid to the Rohingya, Laurence continued.

Fatema Khatoon, who has eluded Myanmar three times as a result of military crackdowns in 1978, 1992, and once more in 2018, is uncertain about the outcome of the conference.

I want to return my land and property with justice. There should be peace, I hope. Eight years have passed since my third visit here. How long must suffering continue? she told Al Jazeera.

In the overcrowded settlements, where many Rohingya rely on aid and suffer from widespread malnutrition, severe hardship has already been brought on by successive aid cuts.

Are proposals for additional conferences made?

At rallies against hotels that house asylum seekers in the UK, far-right protesters and anti-racism activists have squared off. A dozen people were arrested in Liverpool as a result of police’s intervention to separate rival crowds. Following a sexual assault charge against an asylum seeker, protests erupted in recent weeks.

In a nationwide rally, thousands of Australians gathered to demand sanctions against Israel for its atrocities in the Palestinian-enclave, which is currently facing starvation and famine brought on by Israel.

Following Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s decision to grant a Palestinian state on August 11, the tensions between Israel and Australia are growing.

Palestine Action Group reported that more than 40 demonstrations took place on Sunday in various Australian states, including Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, with significant turnouts. According to the group, 350,000 people showed up at rallies all over the country, including about 50 000 in Brisbane. However, the police estimated that Brisbane had only 10,000 attendees. In Sydney and Melbourne, there were no crowd size estimates available.

As rallygoers chanted “Free, free Palestine” in Sydney, organiser Josh Lees claimed Australians were out in force to “demand that our government sanction this genocide in Gaza and demand that our government put an end to this.”

Following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s increased personal attacks on his Australian counterpart over his government’s decision to recognize the Palestinian state, the protests came as a result.

Following France, the UK, and Canada’s announcement to recognize the Palestinian state as a component of the so-called two-state solution, Albanese’s Labor government made the decision. Israel has, however, opposed the establishment of a separate Palestinian state with Israel.

Tens of thousands of people marched across Sydney’s iconic Harbour Bridge on August 11 to demand peace and aid aid to Gaza, which has been famined as a result of the Israeli blockade of aid delivery.

I woke up one morning in July to a flurry of messages lighting up my phone. Every news channel, every social media post, every conversation buzzed with cautious optimism. “Negotiations progressing well”, the headlines declared. “Truce imminent”, “Massive aid convoy preparing to enter”.

At that moment, we were deep in the throes of famine; some days, we ate nothing at all. You can imagine the cautious joy that flickered in our hearts, the way hope travelled through our messages. Friends wrote to me, their words trembling with tentative relief. “Could this really be the end?” one asked. “Will we remember what safety feels like? Will there finally be bread?”

We dared to dream. We imagined the silence of ceasefire, the taste of warm bread, the comfort of a full meal. Some shops tentatively reopened. Prices dipped slightly. For the first time in months, bread seemed almost within reach. For a fleeting moment, life seemed to return to the streets.

In Gaza, even the most battered communities breathe differently when hope appears – even if it is for a few hours.

My neighbour – a war widow raising seven children alone, including an infant who cries endlessly from hunger – told me how her children weep from empty stomachs while she cries from helplessness. When the truce rumours spread, she dreamed of feeding them properly, of ending their suffering. Like all of us, she watched that hope disintegrate.

By the next morning, everything had collapsed. A new headline, cold and final, sealed our fate: “Negotiations fail. No truce.”

Shops that had barely reopened were shuttered. Flour vanished once again. Prices soared beyond reach. Outside Gaza, the media still spoke of aid convoys “on their way”, but on the ground, there was nothing. Empty words. Empty trucks. Empty hands.

You can imagine how hearts broke that day. How the spirit of a people dreaming simply of bread was crushed. How mothers searching desperately for food for their children felt.

The fragile hope that had lit our eyes vanished, leaving only hunger, fear, and silence.

This was not the first time it happened. It had happened many times before. And it happened again afterwards.

Just last week, we found ourselves waiting, this time for a single word from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Hamas reportedly accepted a ceasefire proposal. The uncertainty was unbearable. After several days of silence, the Israeli government made impossible demands, effectively killing the latest attempt at negotiations. The news plunged us back into yet another cycle of despair as hunger, displacement, loss and grief take their toll.

I believe these repeated bouts of ceasefire headlines are not unintentional — they are another form of punishment for the people of Gaza. Another form of torture. We are bombed, starved, displaced and then the news finishes us off.

Hope is dangled in front of us, only to be ripped away, leaving us weaker each time.

It is a deliberate, systematic policy aimed to wear off a defenceless population. It is designed to break our spirit, to make us live in constant uncertainty, to strip us of the basic human right to hope for tomorrow. This cycle – hope raised then shattered – leaves deeper scars than starvation.

While we wait for the news, the hunger tightens its grip. Walk outside and you see it etched on faces: men wiping tears, women collapsing in the streets from exhaustion, children too weak to play. Hunger is not just a physical state – it is an unbearable weight that crushes the soul.

Mothers stop planning meals because they cannot promise they can put something on the table. Children learn early that good news often sours by morning. Families sell their last possessions when aid is announced, only to be left with nothing when it fails to arrive.

This repeated devastation breeds more than mistrust of governments and the media; it erodes the very concept of hope. Many here no longer ask, “When will this end?” but “How much worse can it get?”

According to the World Food Programme, 100 percent of people in Gaza now suffer acute levels of food insecurity, with all children aged below five years facing acute malnutrition. Famine has been officially announced.

Israel continues to claim that its blockade measures prevent supplies from reaching Hamas, even though the US government – its biggest ally – and Israeli officials themselves say there is no evidence of resistance fighters looting aid.

Amnesty International calls the Israeli siege of Gaza “collective punishment” and “a war crime”. The Geneva Conventions explicitly prohibit collective punishment and forced starvation.

And so, I cannot help but ask: Where is the world in all of this? How can an entire planet watch two million people be starved, bombed, and stripped of dignity, and still do nothing?

This silence is heavy; it crushes the spirit as much as hunger does. It tells us that our suffering is acceptable, that our lives can fade away without consequence.

History will condemn those who committed these crimes, but also those who stood by and allowed them to happen.