On this World Refugee Day, as the United Nations calls for “Until Everyone is Safe,” the Rohingya people stand as a stark indictment of that promise.

Nine years after the 2017 genocidal exodus that drove over 700,000 of us into Bangladesh, joining earlier waves to swell our numbers beyond one million in the world’s largest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, there is Only darkening clouds of betrayal, broken promises, funding shortfalls, and renewed threats from the very forces that drove us from our ancestral homeland in Arakan State, Myanmar.

Many media outlet today captures our reality with painful accuracy. After nearly a decade in foreign camps, amid tarpaulin huts on denuded hills once home to wildlife, our people endure statelessness, generational trauma, and a youth bulge simmering with justified anger. Mothers raped, fathers killed, infants burned, crimes without justice.

The international community’s speeches ring hollow while the Terrorist Arakan Army (AA) consolidate control in Rakhine, viewed by Rohingya as an even deadlier existential threat than the junta. Recent escalations have driven fresh outflows, yet global focus fixates on junta versus rebels, ignoring how this binary endangers Rohingya survival.

Funding crises compound the despair. Humanitarian appeals for the Rohingya Joint Response Plan remain underfunded, leading to cuts in food rations, education closures, and essential services.

Women and girls, three-quarters of the camp population in some accounts face heightened vulnerabilities to violence, exploitation. Boat tragedies in the Bay of Bengal claim hundreds more lives as despair drives risky sea journeys. UNHCR and partners rightly urge the world not to forget us, but words without enforceable action perpetuate the cycle.

The Rohingya Demand: Repatriation with Dignity

RSO unequivocally rejects perpetual refugee status or dispersal that erodes our identity. We are not intruders or a security burden; we are indigenous sons and daughters of Arakan, with deep historical roots, entitled to full citizenship, property restitution, safety guarantees, and freedom from persecution in our homeland.

The narco-terrorist Arakan Army’s advances and historical extreme Buddhist rejection of Rohingya presence make safe return impossible without robust safeguards. We have witnessed mass killing, genocide, abuses, and rhetoric labeling us as outsiders or terrorists. Any “solution” ignoring Rohingya rights or empowering groups hostile to our existence is no solution at all.

RSO remains committed to the liberation and self-determination of the Rohingya people. We defend our community against all threats, whether from junta remnants, rival armed factions, or external propaganda, while calling for unity in pursuit of justice.

Armed resistance is a tragic necessity born of abandonment; true peace requires dismantling the structures of genocide, not cosmetic ceasefires that exclude Rohingya voices.

A Call to the World

We urge the UN,OIC, Muslim worlds, Bangladesh, international powers, and Myanmar stakeholders: Move beyond platitudes. Deliver safety. Honor the 1951 Refugee Convention in deed, not just word. The Rohingya people seek our rightful place as free citizens in our homeland.

Until every Rohingya is safe in Arakan with dignity restored, the promise of “Until Everyone is Safe” remains a cruel illusion. RSO stands ready to contribute to genuine peace with justice.