- US and other foreign donor cutbacks in humanitarian aid have worsened the existing education crisis for 437,000 school-age children in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, with schools that served hundreds of thousands of children shut down.
- The cutbacks have closed learning centers run by aid groups. Community-based schools are still operating and are considered better but lack government recognition and are therefore ineligible for donor support, and have to charge fees that many families cannot afford.
- Donors trying to restore educational services should focus on expanding and supporting the community-based schools with participation by Rohingya refugees.
(Bangkok, June 26, 2025) – United States and other foreign donor cutbacks in humanitarian aid have worsened the already existing education crisis for 437,000 school-age children in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch said today. On June 3, 2025, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) suspended thousands of “learning centers” run by nongovernmental organizations in the refugee camps, due to lack of funding.
The only education currently in the Bangladesh refugee camps is at schools established by the Rohingya community without outside support or official recognition. Bangladesh’s interim government should urgently lift restrictions on education for Rohingya refugees, such as lack of accreditation, and donors should support community-led schools. The government should also permit Rohingya children to enroll in schools outside the camps.
“The US and other donor governments are abandoning education for Rohingya children after the previous Bangladesh government long blocked it,” said Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The interim Bangladesh government should uphold everyone’s right to education, while donors should support the Rohingya community’s efforts to prevent a lost generation of students.”
In April and May, Human Rights Watch spoke with 39 Rohingya refugee students, parents, and teachers in the camps in the Cox’s Bazar District, 22 on Bhasan Char island also housing refugees, and 14 international and Bangladeshi teachers, humanitarian workers, and education experts. Most Rohingya fled persecution and wartime atrocities in Myanmar, where they are effectively denied citizenship and other rights.
In 2024, the US government provided US$300 million to respond to the Rohingya refugee crisis, over half of the total amount received by humanitarian agencies. But as of June 2025, the administration of President Donald Trump had slashed aid to $12 million. By April, the humanitarian education sector in Bangladesh – which funds the learning centers – had secured only about $22 million of its $72 million annual budget and was significantly reducing expenditures. Out of a target of 437,000 school-age children in the camps, about 304,000 were enrolled in the learning centers, now closed. UNICEF aimed to reopen the learning centers it funded for classes 6 and above by June 29, and encouraged nongovernmental organizations NGOs to reopen lower classes if they could find other sources of funding.
Rohingya refugees said that community-led schools offered higher-quality education than the learning centers. They hired teachers who had completed most of their upper secondary schooling, and classes had multiple teachers who specialized in different subjects.
The community-led schools, unsupported by government or private donor funding, charge parents monthly tuition fees ranging from around $0.50 for class 1 up to $5 for class 12, a barrier to enrollment for some families. One refugee said: “Parents want to send kids to community-led schools but can’t afford the fees, so the only options are [learning centers]. But when they see that the kids aren’t learning, they send the child to work.”
“There are over 100 [community-led] schools [in the Cox’s Bazar camps],” a principal said. “But no humanitarian [groups] are supporting us, because the Bangladesh authorities don’t recognize us.”
Teachers said the lack of certification, which affected learning centers as well as community-led schools, also undermined students’ hopes to build a better future upon eventual return to Myanmar. “If you made it to grade 12, but without a certificate, you will have to start all over from the beginning,” a community-school teacher said.
Lack of education opportunities has also increased children’s vulnerability to spiraling violence by armed groups and criminal gangs in the Cox’s Bazar camps, including abductions, recruitment, and trafficking. Abductions of children were so frequent in late 2024 that many parents stopped allowing their children to leave their shelters to go to school, refugees said. Protection monitors reported 51 child abductions in the first quarter of 2025.
With the learning centers shut down due to the funding crisis, whether or not funding is found to re-open them, the interim Bangladesh government and donors should recognize and fund community-led schools to increase their capacity, Human Rights Watch said.
The interim Bangladesh government should recognize community-led schools, and the United Nations and aid agencies should include Rohingya educators in decision-making and leadership roles, Human Rights Watch said. Recognition of Rohingya-led schools could encourage donor support and help achieve better instruction for more students.
Bangladesh should follow the example of countries, including Türkiye, that have accredited and certified education for refugee children, including refugee-led schools teaching the curricula of their countries of origin.
Under international human rights law, all children have the right to quality education, without discrimination, regardless of their residency or migration status. International standards for refugee education recommend that refugees meaningfully participate in the planning, implementation, and monitoring of programs.
“The previous Bangladesh government for years blocked education for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya children because they were refugees,” Van Esveld said. “The interim government should reject old policies and support education without discrimination for all children.”
For additional details, please see below.
Background
Educating Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh
Bangladesh hosts over one million Rohingya refugees, 750,000 of whom fled the Myanmar military’s war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide in 2017. An additional 150,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since mid-2024 to escape hostilities between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army, an ethnic armed group that now controls most of Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Because Rohingya in Rakhine State live under apartheid and persecution, children’s access to education has eroded and is now almost nonexistent, with schools closed due to conflict.
Bangladesh’s national security adviser has said that the interim government’s policy is to repatriate Rohingya to Myanmar, even though repression and violence make safe, dignified, and voluntary returns impossible. The Bangladesh government’s restrictions on education will undermine Rohingyas’ ability to rebuild their lives when returns are possible. “If they don’t get an education here,” said a humanitarian education worker, “when they go back home they will have a huge learning gap.”
The Bangladesh government has prohibited Rohingya refugee children who have arrived since 2017 from enrolling in public or private schools, learning Bangla, or studying a formal curriculum, to prevent their long-term integration in Bangladesh. Humanitarian agencies initially responded by establishing “learning centers” in the Cox’s Bazar camps without a set curriculum. By 2018, Rohingya refugee teachers in the camps had also created informal community-led schools, teaching the Myanmar curriculum.
Additional learning centers have since been set up in Bhasan Char island’s reinforced-concrete cyclone shelters.
In 2020, the Bangladesh government permitted the learning centers to introduce the Myanmar curriculum informally. These centers were closed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Community-led schools continued teaching until late 2021, when authorities forcibly closed them for lacking authorization. About 100 community-led schools have since reopened.
Meanwhile, by early 2025, humanitarian organizations had scaled-up use of the Myanmar curriculum and introduced an accelerated learning program for out-of-school children, before having to suspend activities in June due to US funding cuts.
The learning centers, operated by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), were tuition-free. The previous Bangladesh government restricted Rohingya teachers to paid “volunteer” positions and required the learning centers to be managed by professional staff from Bangladeshi organizations. Their educational programs were negotiated between the UN and the government. In Cox’s Bazar, Rohingya “volunteer” teachers taught five subjects, while Bangladeshi nationals taught English. The Bhasan Char centers only used Rohingya teachers. Rohingya teachers earned 13,000 Bangladeshi taka (US$106) per month.
Community-led schools charge monthly tuition fees, and teachers earn 3,000 to 8,000 taka ($25 to $65) per month. Many of these teachers had primary jobs with humanitarian agencies, which was their main source of income. Bangladesh’s interim government allows the community-led schools to operate before 8 a.m. and after 4 p.m., outside the learning centers’ hours.
Students and teachers described greater absenteeism at learning centers, where fewer students continued to upper-secondary level. The Cox’s Bazar learning centers, before the US cutbacks, had only 57 students in class 11, the most senior class offered. On Bhasan Char, where the authorities have transferred thousands of Rohingya refugees, the learning centers had 11,000 students, but only 6 in class 9, the most senior class available there.
Rohingya students and teachers at both community-led schools and learning centers, and education experts said the lack of accredited education or pathways to higher education contributed to students leaving education before completing secondary school. Refugees described family members who fled the refugee camps and risked potentially deadly overseas journeys, including to find formal education in other countries, or sent remittances to pay fees at community-led schools in the camps.
Refugee Participation in Education Programs
The Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) Minimum Standards for Education, developed by leading governmental and nongovernmental agencies, recommend meaningful refugee community participation in humanitarian education responses. International human rights conventions enshrine “the liberty of individuals and bodies to establish and direct educational institutions” and to choose schools that “ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.”
Rohingya students, parents, and teachers interviewed by Human Rights Watch expressed greater satisfaction with community-led schools than the learning centers. However, Rohingya “master-trainers,” who trained teachers at learning centers, said Bangladesh’s policy restricting Rohingya to paid “volunteer” roles limited their ability to improve quality.
“If you want to develop a society you must involve people from the society,” said a community-led school principal. “[Humanitarian NGOs] conduct many meetings and say ‘We prioritize your feedback,’ but don’t implement it.”
A master-trainer on Bhasan Char said, “We have no decision-making authority.… All the quality-assurance people in education are Bangladeshi, but they don’t know the [Myanmar] curriculum, so they can’t improve the system.”
A master-trainer in Cox’s Bazar said a Bangladeshi teacher habitually “came and signed in at the school but then left.” When “I tried to say something, it made problems, so now I don’t say anything,” the master-trainer said. “The [NGO] office prohibited us from managing the host-community teachers.”
Instruction Quality
A 2019 research-institute study found that teachers at community-led schools had “invaluable” knowledge of the Myanmar education system and the Rohingya and Burmese languages, but had not been “meaningfully engaged” by the humanitarian education sector.
Rohingya students, parents, and educators said that learning center teachers were less qualified and typically taught five subjects, versus specialized teachers at community-led schools. One mother said, “[I]f there was no community-led learning our children would not improve at all.”
Teachers contrasted community-led schools, which paid teachers according to their qualifications, with learning centers, which paid primary and secondary teachers and teacher-mentors the same amount. Master trainers, the highest education-sector position available to Rohingya, were paid 15,000 taka ($123) a month. A Rohingya man with a university degree, who established a community-led school, said that one of his students was hired as a master trainer at a learning center.
Humanitarian planning reports have described the lack of educated Rohingya refugees, due to discriminatory restrictions against Rohingya education in Myanmar, as an obstacle to scaling up quality education. The humanitarian education sector in Bangladesh provided trainings to teachers at learning centers, including on subjects in the Myanmar curriculum, monthly lesson planning, and preventing and reporting child abuse, and to Rohingya teacher mentors (responsible for multiple learning centers) and master trainers.
However, teachers and principals at community-led schools said that more educated Rohingya often chose not to teach in the learning centers. They contend that a better-organized system, with Rohingya participation in management decisions, teachers paid according to their qualifications, and classes taught by teachers with subject-matter expertise, would attract more and better teachers and reach more students.
The Rohingya interviewed said that quality of instruction is also linked to greater retention of students in secondary and upper-secondary levels at community-led schools than at learning centers. “When I started in class 4 there were 20 students, now only five remain,” said a class 8 learning-center student. On Bhasan Char, a community-led school with 100 students had more students in classes 9 to 11 than all the learning centers, with 11,000 students. Two teachers said that they asked NGOs if they could teach community-led school classes in unused rooms in the cyclone shelters used by learning centers but were told that they would be fired if they continued to teach in the community-led school.
Testing and Grade Promotion
Learning center students took end-of-year tests in June 2024, a process organized by UNICEF where, to ensure fairness, tests were marked by teachers from different learning centers. However, the results were not distributed until May 2025, after students had been promoted to the next class. Two teachers said their managers pressured them to fill in students’ marks on their “progress cards,” without knowing the marks by the start of the academic year in August 2024. Human Rights Watch observed marks on several students’ progress cards, before the marks had been distributed.
Some tests, marked by teachers from other learning centers, were clearly mistaken, teachers said. A class 5 teacher said he had a student “who can’t write Burmese, and he got the highest mark in Burmese. The best student got a much lower mark.” Another teacher said the top marks in his class went to a student who did not know the material and attended classes “at most, five days per month,” because he worked to help his parents earn income.
Due to the budget cuts, the humanitarian education sector cancelled the 2025 learning assessments.
By contrast, about 50 Rohingya community-led schools in the Cox’s Bazar camps established an “examination board” to ensure fair exams, which will next be held in March 2026. Community-led schools had previously held tests and distributed the marks by the start of the next academic year. Passing the previous class is required to advance, creating “motivation for the learners to work hard,” a master teacher said.
Upper Secondary School Classes for Adolescent Girls
Few Rohingya girls continue in education after age 13, in part because of parents’ concerns about the risk of violence including abduction and sexual assault. To mitigate these concerns, the humanitarian sector established “community-based learning facilities,” where female teachers used their own shelters as classrooms to teach girls living nearby. However, none of the learning centers in the Cox’s Bazar camps offered lessons higher than class 5.
In one camp with 28 such facilities, the highest level offered was class 2, a master trainer said. On Bhasan Char, 13 female students, ages 13 to 18, 2 of whom are married with children, are currently studying class 3 at a learning center. However, there is a need for girls to have safe and secure access both to primary and secondary-level classes, teachers said.
By contrast, in one Rohingya community-led school with 175 female students, which used individual shelters as classrooms across 5 camps in Cox’s Bazar, girls are studying in class 9 and 10 of the Myanmar curriculum. One student in class 10, aged 14, said she hopes to complete secondary education and continue to university. A woman now working at a continuing education program said she and six female classmates started class 7 in a community-led school “and all seven of us completed class 12.”
Child marriage of girls in the refugee camps is widespread due to lack of education, income, and space in overcrowded shelters, according to a group interview with six women from various camps in Cox’s Bazar. Improving access to quality education for girls would help prevent child marriage, one woman said. Another woman added that learning centers carried out community outreach on the importance of girls’ education but said this was undermined by the perceived poor quality of education at learning centers.
Importance of Continuing and Higher Education
Without accredited education or the ability to leave the camps, it is impossible for Rohingya students in Bangladesh to pursue higher education.
Most of those interviewed said that the lack of professional and educational pathways decreased students’ motivation and increased dropouts and discipline problems. A teacher at a community-led school in Camp 17, with 300 students, said: “Students are not seeing their future, so there is no discipline. If teachers say something and students don’t agree, they might just leave and say we are wasting our money.”
A master trainer contrasted his youth in Myanmar, before restrictions blocked Rohingya from university education, and in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps. “When I was a student in class 2, we already dreamed of going to university and professions. But here … there are no goals, they don’t see anything in the future. If there is no dream, there is no reason for hard work.”
One positive initiative in the camps is a six-month learning program for Rohingya aged 15-24, run , with an 83 percent completion rate, according to staff. However, the program’s capacity is limited. About 1,000 Rohingya had completed the program and 1,000 more are enrolled while a 2022 UN assessment found more than 306,000 youth aged 18-24 in the camps.
A Bangladeshi education expert said that the government should allow universities to enroll Rohingya students and allow internet access for online learning including higher education. Some students manage to enroll in online higher education in the camps but contravene official policy to do so.
Child Abduction and Recruitment by Armed Groups
Abductions for ransom or by armed groups of children in the Cox’s Bazar camps were so frequent in late 2024 that many parents stopped allowing their children to leave their shelters, including to go to school, camp residents said. A learning program for 15–24-year-olds stopped operating for a month because “students had been abducted, children and adults,” the director said. A father said that UN agencies were unable to keep children safe, and regretted that his 8-year-old son, and his daughters in class 5 and class 4, had all dropped out of community-led schools due to fear after attempted attacks or assaults.
In the first quarter of 2025, UN protection monitors reported 38 boys and 13 girls were kidnapped or abducted in the camps. In group interviews conducted in April 2025, 14 people in the Cox’s Bazar camps described six cases of child abduction for ransom in 2024 and 2025, in one of which the child abducted was killed. They said none of the cases had a meaningful police investigation.
Human Rights Watch documented cases in which Rohingya armed groups recruited and used a 13-year-old boy as a porter and cleaner in Myanmar, and used a 10-year-old boy to smuggle yaba, a methamphetamine, across checkpoints. The prevalence of child recruitment, a humanitarian official said, was linked to the lack of education: “[Children] are in this small area, with no certificates, no future. Ask them about their dreams and they might laugh. [Armed groups are] the way to status and some money.”
By contrast, on Bhasan Char, Human Rights Watch interviewed three refugee families who had relocated to the island after being targeted by armed groups in the mainland camp. All the people interviewed said there was no armed group activity on the island, unlike the mainland camps, and that Bangladesh authorities clamped down periodically on smuggling groups.
Bhasan Char Island
“The main reasons for dropouts are lack of quality education, [to go] to work, and to go back to [the mainland] camp,” a teacher said. A student at a learning center said that three of the four teachers he had last year had fled. The journey to the mainland can prove fatal: during the rainy season in 2024, two or three people drowned each month as they took boats to reach the mainland, a teacher said.
There are currently no specialized education programs for children with disabilities in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar or on Bhasan Char island. Groups specializing in support for children with disabilities used to work in Cox’s Bazar but closed their programs due to funding cuts.