In search of safety, a state, and schooling: The barriers to adolescent Rohingya girls’ education

In search of safety

Upon arriving in Cox’s Bazar, adolescent girls (aged 10-19) commonly reported systematic sexual violence at the hands of the Myanmar military (Plan International, 2018). Today, many are traumatized and suffering from the prolonged effects of mental ill health due to their experiences (Guglielmi, S. et al 2020; Mohsin, A. 2020). Within refugee camps, adolescent girls still struggle to find safety from sexual violence, including at school. Humanitarian agencies report incidences of school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) on a regular basis and adolescent girls’ concomitant disengagement due to a lack of protection and diminished confidence in the value of education (Plan International, 2018; UNICEF, 2019; Prodip & Garnett, 2019). Since the outbreak of COVID19, as families struggle financially there are also reported increases in child trafficking and child, early, and forced marriage (CEFM), further impacting girls’ safety and well-being, and erasing hope for quality schooling and a brighter future (UNICEF, 2020).

In terms of finding a future free from persecution and attack, few workable or permanent solutions are on the table for the Rohingya. In 2019, with United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) brokerage Myanmar was willing to engage in a repatriation process. However, despite resettlement provisions being made by the Myanmar government the situation reached a stalemate due a lack of guarantees for Rohingya safety, return of land titles, or recognition of citizenship (Prodip & Garnett, 2019). All the while Rohingya refugees experienced a deterioration of camp conditions and worsening relations with Bangladeshi host communities (Uddin, 2020).

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) (2020) reports that since the outbreak of COVID19 in March 2020, over 300,000 Rohingya children and adolescents have been denied access to learning due to the closure of camp schools and temporary learning facilities. Personal communications with colleagues from UNICEF Bangladesh’s office in Cox’s Bazar (November 18th, 2020) also reveal the widespread incidence of Rohingya families denying adolescent girls access to distance learning materials and support at home.

Against this backdrop, my paper provides a context analysis of adolescent Rohingya girls’ search for safety, a state, and schooling. Below, I evaluate how a lack of citizenship and attendant state protection compounds the risks that adolescent girls face. I also introduce context specific political and cultural factors working against Rohingya girls’ right to quality and safe learning in Cox’s Bazar. This analysis features the actors responsible for their safety and well-being, as well as those who perpetuate multiple forms of abuse in the spaces where girls should be safest; noting that these actors are often one and the same. In the final part of my paper, I analyze the prevailing and harmful gender beliefs that prevent adolescent girls’ access to and retention in school. In light of deeply entrenched complexities, I conclude with a brief analysis of recommendations to safeguard girls from violence and abuse in school settings, noting in particular the disconnect between sociological and anthropological evidence and the aspirations of humanitarian sector recommendations.

In search of a state

Anthropologist Nasir Uddin (2020) considers statelessness to be a life lived without citizenship, which he defines as a reciprocal relationship of rights and duties between individuals and the state. Borrowing from political theorist Hannah Arendt, Uddin (2020) conveys that for the Rohingya, citizenship equals “the right to have all rights” (p.93). Along similar lines, Amena Moshin (2020) reveals that citizenship entails equality of opportunities and freedom; a lack of which has determined adolescent girls’ current deprivations, including poor access to education and health services and no freedom of movement.

Bangladesh has hosted communities of Rohingya refugees since 1962, when the Myanmar (then Burma) military junta first revoked Rohingya citizenship. With intermittent refugee surges every time inter-communal tensions flared, Bangladesh has long been a safe haven for Rohingya fleeing conflict (Phiri, 2008; Milton et al. 2017). It is important to note that while the United Nations (UN) system refers to this population as Rohingya refugees, the Government of Bangladesh (GoB), which leads and coordinates the refugee response, refers to the Rohingya as ‘forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals’ (FDMN) (Milton et al 2017). Further complicating matters, the Myanmar government refers to the Rohingya as illegal Bengali migrants, in part due to the multiple waves of exodus and repatriation that the Rohingya have experienced over nearly 50 years of violence. Yet, there is strong anthropological evidence of a linguistically and culturally discernible Rohingya ethnic group living in Rakhine state for the past thousand years (Uddin, 2020; Moshin, 2020).

Bangladesh is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention nor its 1967 Protocol. Consequently, there is no specific provision for refugees in national legislation, although certain laws and provisions in the Constitution provide protections to all people – citizens and non-citizens alike – within Bangladesh’s territory (Magee et al. 2020). The GoB’s current position is focused more on providing transitory humanitarian relief rather than long-term integration into Bangladeshi society (Milton et al. 2017). The UNHCR currently operates in Bangladesh under a Memorandum of Understanding, signed in 1993, which also has the voluntary repatriation of Rohingya to Myanmar as its main focus. This, combined with the lack of a legal framework to deal with refugees, provides for an ad hoc environment of cooperation with GoB institutions, which results in an insecure and unpredictable environment for adolescent Rohingya girls (Magee et al, 2020).

Bangladesh ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1985, but the degree to which Bangladesh is accountable to the treatment of adolescent Rohingya girls is blurry at best. Adolescent Rohingya girls have nominal state protection through loose constitutional mechanisms which are rarely, if ever, operationalized for refugees. This means that ensuring adherence to CEDAW falls upon a decentralized and informal patchwork of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). As Sang (2018) reports, the Rohingya’s lack of status means that despite the concerted efforts of agencies working in the camps, adolescent girls’ access to basic services as well as justice and other protective frameworks is severely limited. What this initial analysis of the political context shows is that even without the cultural factors that put adolescent Rohingya girls at risk, the political context offers few protections and exacerbates their vulnerability.

In the absence of a representative state authority, the void is filled by religious institutions and leaders. This is pertinent to the resurgence of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and child, early, and forced marriage (CEFM). Rohingya Muslims belong to the Hanafi school of Islam, which is more conservative than other branches of Sunni Islam (Ripoll, 2017). In Myanmar, Rohingya’s practice of Hanafi Islam was suppressed by military forces and Buddhist extremists. In Bangladesh the Rohingya are able to practice their faith freely and do so with renewed fervour and orthodoxy. Male imams and mullahs, who lead prayer in mosques and teach Quranic studies in madrassa (Islamic schools) are overwhelmingly influential regarding the community’s adherence to Hanafi social and cultural norms (Ripoll, 2017). These norms restrict adolescent Rohingya girls’ mobility, both through the practice of purdah – the screening of women from men and strangers by using a curtain in the home or by way of clothing – and through the gendered prescription of care work to females (Sang, 2018). According to Ripoll (2017), purdah is a symbol of individual pride and emblematic of the family’s status, determining the extent to which adolescent girls are able to engage in work, education, or public life.

As reported by UNHCR (2018), while girls up to the age of 12 are commonly seen outdoors caring for younger siblings, from the point of puberty until marriage they are expected to remain within the home. As well as impacting access to services such as education, health, and protection, purdah-related restrictions deny adolescent girls’ the opportunity to develop friendships; resulting in diminished social networks and poor coping strategies to contend with the long-term situation before them (Gordon, Jay, and Lee-Koo, 2018).

Because a majority of the Rohingya casualties in Myanmar were men, there is also a pronounced gender imbalance within Cox’s Bazar camps. As such, many women and adolescent girls have become breadwinners outside of domestic care roles or in place of education. In opposition to cultural norms this reality is causing increased social friction, and adolescent girls are experiencing increased rates of SGBV and harassment from men in the community, including from male mulvis (heads of madrassas), mullahs, and majhis, who are the designated community unit leaders within the camps (Ripoll, 2017). Also bearing responsibility for the distribution of humanitarian aid, majhis have disproportionate power. Rohingya adolescents commonly associate majhi with a sense of insecurity and some are known to exploit adolescents within the camps. As such, their position makes the reporting, redress, and prevention of SGBV a challenge (Ripoll, 2017). Reported low rates of SGBV disclosure also relates to the stigma ascribed to victims of sexual violence, their fear of retaliation, and longer-term consequences such as being seen by future suitors as sullied (UNHCR, 2018; Toma, Chowdhury, Gora, & Padamada, 2018).

Domestic violence is understood by many adolescent Rohingya girls as an acceptable social norm (Toma et al, 2018). Research reveals that one in four adolescent girls aged between 10-14 and close to one in ten aged 15-19 reported being hit or beaten within the month of interviews, with 87 per cent of incidents occurring in the home (Gordon et al, 2018). Although participants in both age groups described themselves as safe in their household (93.67 per cent), a significant proportion of this group reported regular physical violence in the home (Gordon et al, 2018). Paradoxes like this exist across the literature. In their rapid gender analysis in Cox’s Bazar, Toma et al’s (2018) focus group discussions (FGD) with adolescent girls also reveal concerning beliefs. One participant stated that “I don’t think beating your wife is violence; men have the right to beat women if they do something wrong” (p.37). Another participant believed that there is nothing they can do about domestic violence, stating that “our husbands beat us severely but we have to bear it, and after that we cook food for them” (p.37).

As communicated by the Cox’s Bazar office of UNICEF Bangladesh (November 15th, 2020), since the COVID19 outbreak there has been a resurgence of CEFM and child trafficking. This has an associated negative impact on adolescent girls’ access to learning. As such, before I focus on girls’ search for schooling in the Rohingya context, I need to introduce the dynamics that explain the prevalence of CEFM and child trafficking in the Rohingya community. In Malinkas et al’s (2020) study of CEFM, a focus group discussion (FGD) participant recalls that in Myanmar "you could not get married before the age of 18. And if anyone married in secret and the military found out about it, they beat them up and fined them heavily” (p.5). Similarly, a participant in UNFPA and UNICEF’s (2020) study of CEFM conveys that “in Myanmar, we lived in fear of the government, so we could not move freely and had to live with anxiety, and marriages took a long time to arrange” (p.59). In this same study, among Rohingya respondents aged 20–24 marriage before age 15 in Myanmar was very uncommon, with only one woman in the sample having married before 15. In the 15-19 age group, who arrived in Bangladesh in 2017, there is a significant increase in CEFM, with 13.3 per cent of UNHCR registered refugees and 14.3 per cent of Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals (FDNM) married before age 15. As well as freedom from Myanmar’s Rohingya marriage restrictions, drivers of CEFM include the prohibition of adolescent sexuality before marriage, economic insecurity, and a lack of meaningful life alternatives for adolescent girls (UNFPA & UNICEF, 2020).

Religious orthodoxy is influencing these norms. As a 14 year old participant in Malinkas et al’s (2020) study reveals, the mullahs and imams tell us that “girls have to get married as soon as their menstrual cycle starts because it is a religious obligation in Islam” (p.6). Of additional concern is the fact that Bangladeshi men are bringing adolescent Rohigya girls from the camps into polygamous marriages. As a Bangladeshi adolescent explains, “five men from this village have married Rohingya girls… These girls are marrying Bangladeshi men who are as old as their fathers and grandfathers!” (p.9).

With regards to the increased incidence of child trafficking during the pandemic, McCafferie (2019) describes how trafficking places additional risk on illiterate adolescent Rohingya girls in particular. The United Nations General Assembly definition of child trafficking is the “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of children for the purpose of exploitation” (p.52). McCafferie (2019) reports that adolescent Rohingya girls’ lack of access to education, the prevalence of child labour, and ubiquity of CEFM have increased the incidence of trafficking. McCafferie (2019) also theorizes that with no substantive education opportunities available, employment outside the camps or overseas - presented as domestic labor as a cover for the sex trade - can be very alluring. Additionally, a lack of education and social networks appeals to brokers and smugglers, who specifically target illiterate girls from single parent households (p54). What is evident here is the symbiotic trap that a lack of education and the prevalence of CEFM and trafficking represents for adolescent Rohingya girls in Cox’s Bazar.

In search of schooling:

The residual trauma experienced by educated Rohingya women and the loss of a male teaching force - who were intentionally massacred by the Myanmar military - has resulted in a woeful educational skills shortage; rendering the Rohingya largely dependent on outside assistance for support (Prodip and Garnett, 2019; Uddin, 2020). Soon after the crisis began, however, only 3 percent of Rohingya parents identified education as a priority for adolescent girls (Toma et al, 2018). And due to Bangladesh’s refusal to admit Rohingya children into state schools outside of refugee camps, as well as their ban on the use of a formal curriculum within camps, education has been delivered ad hoc through madrassas, private tuition, and NGO-led temporary learning centers (Olney, Haque, & Muburak, 2019). As a result, recent data from IRC shows that 97 percent of adolescents and youths aged 15–24 are not attending any type of education (Magee et al, 2020).

Adolescent girls commonly identify education as critical to their current and future protection and well-being, with many intimating that if it weren’t for parents’ objections, schools would be full of adolescent girls eager to learn (Gordon et al, 2018; Plan International, 2018; Sang, 2018; Bakali & Wasty, 2020). Yet, as Plan International (2018) reports, limitations on accessing education are linked to the cultural restrictions placed upon adolescent girls’ freedom of movement. It is also reported that in Myanmar, gender differences in educational attainment were highest in Rakhine state (Abdelkader, 2014; Prodip & Garnett, 2018). And as such, this longer-term deprivation of education means that girls who can access education require remedial and accelerated learning support, which is a further deterrent (Plan International, 2018). As articulated in the previous section, and as confirmed by a Bangladeshi teacher, conservative gender norms preclude adolescent girls’ continued education. He states that in the Rohingya community “after the first menstrual flow a girl is captive in home by her family. They no longer have permission to come to school or the learning centre. In a word, girls stay at home as prisoners” (Guglielmi et al 2019. p.3).

It is difficult to determine how much competing needs such as nutrition, health, shelter, and security influenced the fact that only 3 percent of parents saw education as a priority. This determination is made more difficult when parents’ cultural perceptions of girls’ education are taken into account. Parents interviewed in Plan International’s (2018) study convey that an adolescent girls’ honor is more important, and that formal education and purdah are incompatible. Prodip and Garnett’s (2018) study on emergency education provisions for Rohingya refugees shows how parents take guidance from mulvis, the madrassa leaders who offer rare educational avenues for adolescent girls. They inform parents that Islamic education is the first priority, and that without Islamic education adolescent girls will not know how to be “loyal, gentle, and loving in their future husband’s house” (Prodip & Garnett, 2018. p.211). They also inform parents that formal schooling dissuades proper Islamic learning, and that once girls reach the age of 9 or 10 their education should cease, for fear of mixing with sexually mature men (Prodip & Garnett, 2018).

Additional reasons include the very nature of the Rohingya community’s precarity and dependency. As another Bangladeshi teacher projects, Rohingya parents are focused on daily survival, and for the foreseeable future they are content to rely on the service of the GoB, and national and international NGOs (Prodip & Garnett, 2018). Due to their abject employment opportunities in Bangladesh and poor citizenship prospects in Myanmar, education is not perceived as a valuable short-term investment.

For Rohingya parents who do value formal education, a lack of qualified female teachers is another reason for keeping girls at home. As introduced in the previous section, schools, madrassas, temporary learning centers, and the transport routes in between are known sites of SGBV and harassment, as are non sex-segragated bathroom facilities. Furthermore, a lack of menstrual health management provisions and poor sexual and reproductive health services means that schooling, despite its purported benefits, can be isolating and dangerous in the minds of adolescent girls. Evidence from comparable contexts shows, however, that these risks and deterrents are mitigated by a larger ratio of qualified female teachers and social workers, alongside professional development support for gender-responsive schools (UNICEF, 2020). Nevertheless, to the extent that education’s long-term value is undermined by short-term precarity and medium term uncertainty, on top of restrictive and discriminatory cultural norms the odds are stacked against adolescent Rohingya girls’ schooling.

The analysis above illustrates a situation with seemingly intractable cultural norms negatively impacting desperate social and economic realities. Highlighting the need for more comprehensive research, I want to close with a brief analysis of promising practices and key recommendations for how to improve adolescent Rohingya girls’ access to education. Smitheram (2018) profiles an initiative from Bangladesh NGO BRAC, which provides a stop gap model of flexible education. Reflecting a desire to determine and control their own education, BRAC supports parents to design and build school infrastructure and maintain the project through local parents. Through Rohingya School Management Committees, parents are guided in solution finding, creating stability, and ensuring sustainability. Teachers are identified and trained from within the camp, and education activities are kept low profile due to associated cultural volatility.

Smitheran (2018) also shows how this approach preserves culture, and through the training and employment of refugee teachers there is an incentive for the continuing ownership and leadership of the project. Another key element is the socialization with fathers, using culturally contextualized evidence of why education for adolescent girls is vital. One Rohingya father reported that: “We have found out about how girls getting married this young is bad for their health, so we understand this now and we are trying to prevent the practice” (p. 8).

Kirk and Winthrop’s (2008) study of home-based schooling for adolescent girls in Afghanistan also offers promise. They profile multi-grade single-sex classes which take place in the homes of female teachers and have broad support from the Taliban, too. In this example, community trained teachers provide access to learning that is culturally and geographically accessible, and through small payments young teachers are able to contribute to their families and community and develop skills for future employment opportunities. As Kirk and Winthrop (2008) illustrate, a striking feature of this initiative is the extent to which teachers focus on the well-being of their students and prioritize the development of children’s Islamic character, or tarbia. Given the reluctance of Rohingya mulvis to endorse girls’ learning outside the home or madrassa, this approach could be appropriate for and adapted to Cox’s Bazar, too.

Additional examples of promising practice need to be further examined in future research. Given the contextual complexity described in this paper, what these examples illuminate is the importance of local leadership and ownership of education for adolescent girls. Sang (2018) recommends awareness-raising sessions on gender equality and women’s rights for male community leaders, including majhis, imams, and fathers. Likewise, Ripoll (2017) reminds us of the importance of meeting the Rohingya’s religious and cultural needs, and of using this avenue to address educational and material priorities. Plan International (2018) advocates for the full resourcing and systematic participation of adolescent Rohingya girls in all decisions affecting their lives; meaning they must be included in the design, implementation and evaluation processes of humanitarian programmes. All of this and more aligns with standards of good practice and effective ways of working in humanitarian contexts. However, as Jamal (2014) believes, these forms of local participation can become a new tyranny for development workers when they raise unrealistic expectations or overestimate the effectiveness of NGOs (p.3). Moreover, based on my context analysis above, which draws primarily upon anthropological and sociological research, a stark disconnect appears between evidence of the dire and entrenched situation that adolescent Rohingya girls face and how workable, culturally compatible humanitarian interventions can be inclusively conceived and sustainably facilitated.

To fully conceptualize pragmatic interventions for adolescent Rohingya girls, future research needs to investigate strategies that address the institutional barriers to their education. It is argued that the most effective way to achieve gender justice is to first focus on structural transformation (Jamal, 2014). Through an Islamic perspective, men need support to understand the benefits of gender equality and to agree that change is necessary. This would mean working with and leveraging the power of actors such as the mahji, mulvi, imams, and mullahs; those responsible for discriminatory restrictions. For unless there is a significant change in men’s attitudes, the struggle for adolescent Rohingya girls’ education will continue to be an uphill fight.

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