with Pakistan. Since the early 2000’s, their citizenship status has been recognised and community members have progressively been granted citizenship.19 In this sense, while the formal citizenship status of this population has been resolved, Urdu-speaking people continue to be impacted by the legacies of statelessness.20 23. The Rohingya community in Bangladesh encounters significant obstacles in accessing their nationality as well as other human rights. UN bodies, academics and NGOs, have given particular attention to the human rights violations of Rohingya subject to mass displacement in 2017.21 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh reside within refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, facing limited access to health and social services, education and living in precarious conditions condemned by residents, international organisations and NGOs.22 The Government of Bangladesh has been relocating residents of Cox’s Bazar to the remote island of Bhasan Char.23 As of February 2022, an estimated number of 19,000 people had been relocated.24 24. Digitalisation of the birth registration process has further exacerbated the citizenship acquisition process in Bangladesh. The shift to the digital application system has made the process inaccessible for a large group of people and has increased costs making them reliant on intermediaries to help them with the process. Birth registration is already a concern in the country as a third of the children’s births are not registered to prevent them from, for example, accessing formal education. More importantly, a birth certificate is an important document to be submitted during the citizenship acquisition process. 25. Further, while gender discriminatory provisions that prevent women from passing nationality to their children were removed through amendments to the Citizenship Act in 2009,25 under existing law, women remain unable to confer nationality onto their foreign spouses on an equal basis with men. 19 US Department of State, '2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Bangladesh', (April 2022), p. 49, available at: https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/bangladesh. 20 Council of Minorities and Namati, ‘Inhuman Camp Life of Bihari Urdu-speaking Linguistic Minority of Bangladesh’, (2018), available at: https://namati.org/resources/inhuman-camp-life-of-bihari-urdu-speaking-linguistic-minority-of-bangladesh/; Khalid Hussain, ‘The End of Bihari Statelessness’, (2009), Forced Migration Review 30, p. 32, available at: https://www.fmreview.org/statelessness/hussain; Md Kamrul Hasan Arif, ‘The Status of the Bihari Community in Bangladesh under Domestic and International Law’, (2018,) 25 International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 664; Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion and Council of Minorities, ‘Bangladesh: Together We Can’ (August 2021), available at: https://files.institutesi.org/BANGLADESH_Together_We_Can.pdf; Katherine Southwick, ‘The Urdu-speakers of Bangladesh: An Unfinished Story of Enforcing Rights’ in Brad K Blitz and Maureen Lynch (eds) Statelessness and Citizenship: A Comparative Study on the Benefits of Nationality (Elgar, 2011). 21 See further, Act for Peace, ‘An Agenda for a Dignified and Sustainable Rohingya Refugee Response in Bangladesh’, (May 2021); Nasir Uddin, ‘The State, Vulnerability, and Transborder Movement: The Rohingya People in Myanmar and Bangladesh’ in N Uddin and N Chowdrey (eds), Deterritorialised Identity and Transborder Movement in South Asia (2019); Christopher Faulkner and Samual Schiffer, ‘Unwelcomed? The Effects of Statelessness on Involuntary Refugee Repatriation in Bangladesh and Myanmar’, (2019), 108(2) The Round Table 145; UNHCR, ‘Bangladesh Operational Update: August 2021’, (30 September 2021), available at: https://reliefweb.int/report/bangladesh/unhcr-bangladesh-operational-update-august-2021; Malang Faye, ‘Forced Migration from Myanmar to Bangladesh and Beyond: Humanitarian Response to Rohingya Refugee Crisis’ (2021) 6(13) Journal of International Humanitarian Action 1. 22 Human Rights Watch, ‘“Are We Not Human” Denial of Education for Rohingya Refugee Children in Bangladesh’ (December 2019), available at: https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/12/03/are-we-not-human/denial-education-rohingya-refugee-childrenbangladesh; Kaamil Ahmed, ‘“Like an Open Prison”: A Million Rohingya Refugees Still in Bangladesh Camps Five Years After Crisis’, The Guardian (23 August 2022), available at: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/aug/23/fiveyears-rohingya-refugees-2017-bangladesh-myanmar-military-crackdown. 23 Human Rights Watch, ‘“An Island Jail in the Middle of the Sea” Bangladesh’s Relocation of Rohingya refugees to Bhasan Char’, (June 2021), available at: https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/06/07/island-jail-middle-sea/bangladeshs-relocation-rohingyarefugees-bhasan-char. 24 Hanh Nguyen and Themba Lewis, ‘Bhasan Char and Refugee ‘Warehousing’, The Diplomat, (8 February 2022), available at: https://thediplomat.com/2022/02/bhasan-char-and-refugee-warehousing/. 25 Ibid. 5