For decades, the Rohingya, who are majority Muslim, have been subjected to discriminatory laws depriving them of citizenship and systematic persecution by the Burmese state and Buddhist extremists, resulting in forced displacement from their ancestral communities in Rakhine State. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees were (and still are) forced to flee to neighboring Bangladesh, a lower middle income country with no national framework put in place to protect refugees.
Living in one of the largest refugee camps in the world, Rohingya refugees unfortunately have limited access to legal work, education, healthcare and other human rights while being vulnerable to repatriation and detention. These conditions have only been made worse by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic has changed the world in unprecedented ways, including global health, and has revealed numerous inequalities on local, national and international levels. However, the coronavirus knows no borders, and unfortunately, our world's refugees and migrants remain the most vulnerable to it. While this map does not incorporate COVID-19 data due to limitations, I hope that this tool can serve as an introduction to the issue of refugee and migrant health, the concept of statelessness, and the Rohingya refugee crisis as a whole. I have included some resources on the Resources section, including ways to help the Rohingya refugees.This map is a work in progress, and I sincerely appreciate any feedback.
You can contact me at binita.zn97@gmail.com.
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