Category World News

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.