August 25, 2026, marks nine years since the day nearly 1 million of us Rohingya were forced to flee our homes after the genocide and crimes against humanity committed by Myanmar’s military. We fled to a place often described as the world’s most dangerous and crowded refugee camp, in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. It is now home to over 1.3 million Rohingya refugees.

The possibility of our safe and permanent return is complicated by not just the military but armed groups like the Arakan Army, which control the territory that is our homeland, and a long history of repeated returns without redress of the political realities that made expulsion and genocide possible.

It’s important for the world to know that 2017 was not the first time we Rohingya were forced to leave our homeland become refugees in Bangladesh. Our repatriation has never been sustainable. In 1978, approximately 200,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh before being sent back to Myanmar. And in 1991-1992, roughly 250,000 fled and most were repatriated in the following years. 

Each time, we were sent back without citizenship, rights, or justice, and without a voice in the decisions that impacted our lives. Nothing that forced us out had changed, so the next expulsion was only a matter of time. We have run this experiment twice. Each turn of the cycle sends more of us home to the same danger, and more of us fleeing it again. 

U.N. agencies, Western governments, and donor countries frequently view our problems as simply a humanitarian crisis. But our crisis is not only humanitarian; it is political. 

While humanitarian service delivery organizations ensure that the refugees in the camps have food and basic necessities, they can only keep people alive temporarily. Donors speak of Rohingya self-reliance even as they cut the aid we survive on. But self-reliance is impossible for a people forbidden to work, to move, to educate our children, or to govern ourselves. 

Asking the politically excluded to stand on their own is like asking a bound person to swim. 

Since this crisis is not just humanitarian in nature, humanitarian aid alone cannot provide a sustainable solution: a return home, a future for our children, and the political participation of Rohingya in the Myanmar democracy movement. The path forward requires a political solution. 

A political solution can only be found within Myanmar, for Rohingya belong to Myanmar, and Myanmar belongs to the Rohingya, too. As long as the military controls Myanmar and the political crisis is unresolved, a sustainable solution for the Rohingya is impossible. The system that stripped our citizenship in 1982 is the same system that shot protesters in 2021 and bombs villages across Myanmar today. One institution decides who belongs, who speaks, and who lives. Since the military coup in 2021, communities across Myanmar have felt the same suffering we have experienced for decades. 

This is why our fate and the fate of the Spring Revolution are one. The inclusive federal democracy that the revolution fights for, with equal citizenship and rights protected by law, is the only arrangement under which our return can be permanent. For the first time in generations, the people of Myanmar are fighting for the kind of country we could safely come home to.

A sustainable future will only be possible with the equal, meaningful, and safe participation of Rohingya individuals, community members, and political organizations in every political dialogue that takes place about the future of our community. 

The many crises faced by Rohingya refugees today – human trafficking, sexual violence, forced conscription, child abduction – occur precisely because the Rohingya are stateless. And the Rohingya are stateless because Myanmar’s military does not recognize us as citizens of Myanmar.

All of these problems occur because we have no political power inside our country, a country in which so many of us no longer can live safely. The international community keeps treating the symptoms without touching the underlying cause: our political exclusion within Myanmar. 

The people of Myanmar, including the Rohingya, are hungry for a country with freedom and democracy – where every person in the country is granted citizenship and all other basic human rights.

What can the international community do? There are concrete actions that,  if meaningfully applied with and for our Rohingya community, could create a future where we enjoy peace and can stop marking each year since the genocide in exile.

First, it’s urgently important to allow refugees living in the camps in Bangladesh to work and make their own living to support their families. Funding is limited and aid is constantly endangered. Allow the Rohingya to help support themselves. 

Second, in order to stop repeating the same cycle of forced emigration and unsustainable repatriation, it’s important for Rohingya to be prepared for their return. A critical aspect of that preparation is political. The Rohingya must be allowed to form political organizations within the camps, to train our young people to politically organize, and to allow Rohingya children to go to school using the Burmese curriculum so they are prepared to return to Myanmar when it’s safe to do so.

Third, while people remain in the camps, we need the international community to pay attention. Donor countries need to continue funding much-needed programs in the camps, including monthly food rations from the World Food Program, until a safe, sustainable, voluntary, and dignified repatriation is possible to the homeland of the Rohingya community.

Finally, ASEAN is the natural venue for Rohingya political participation to begin. The ASEAN countries can help by politically intervening when it is needed in the country, and by avoiding engagement with the military junta who committed genocide against Rohingya and other minorities in Myanmar.