5  Community leadership, participation and engagement This research also aimed to understand how far individual perspectives were known and reflected in community leadership structures. Community leaders and community groups (majhis, newer activist community groups and traditional community groups) were asked the same questions as refugees, as well as questions exploring how they interacted with refugees and external stakeholders. Rohingya refugees were asked whether they had been asked about their views on medium- to long-term issues and how they would prefer to have these views gathered and represented in order to ensure high-level discussions on their future included their perspectives. Representing refugee voices in high-level political and policy discussions is critical, but often results in either token representation or misrepresentation through diaspora or community groups that may or may not reflect the perspectives of refugees. In the case of Rohingya refugees, diaspora or community groups engaged in these discussions often do not live in the same locations as the refugees they say they represent, and it has been unclear how Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh feel about such representation. With the large-scale displacement of Rohingya into Bangladesh, multiple groups are competing for influence within and outside the refugee population. While the research found a generally similar outlook among leadership groups on what is needed to support people’s lives in the medium to long term, the relationship between the refugees and leadership groups was marked by a lack of trust in some leaders, and leadership groups were not always considered legitimate by individual refugees. 5.1  Community leadership Community leadership13 among Rohingya refugees is fragmented and seems increasingly marked by competition and conflict between different civil society groups. As a result, engaging with Rohingya refugees and ensuring that their perspectives are represented in higher-level policy dialogues is challenging: it can be difficult to understand how different groups relate to each other and the dynamics between them as well as gauge their legitimacy and representation. As a result, many humanitarian actors have decided not to engage with these groups for fear of their political agenda, at times resulting in a lack of effective engagement with Rohingya refugees. The camp management structure and the CiCs significantly affect community leadership and community relations. CiCs are mandated by the government to assume all camp management responsibilities. Officials sit under the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC) in the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief (see UN, 2019: 20–21). As part of their mandates, CiCs ‘liaise closely with all actors and monitor service delivery overall in the camps, ensuring gaps and duplications are identified and addressed’ (UN, 2019: 21). Their mandate also includes community outreach and participation and informal justice mechanisms – an area where assessments show challenges associated with the quality of justice provision, the discrepancy between women’s interests and the actions taken by camp management, lack of female representation and corruption (IRC, 2019: 6, 15). As per the 2019 JRP, ‘a new community representation model within the camps should progressively be implemented that includes grassroots community organisations and religious leaders’ (UN, 2019: 21). According to the JRP, ‘several community groups have been established by CiC, agencies and other actors at the camp level to support service delivery and maintenance, and represent groups of the population’ (UN, 2019: 21). Community representation and the organisation of community life has been approached in a very top-down way, and has been significantly shaped both by aid agencies and by government officials. Several refugees we interviewed said that their community leaders, the majhis, were chosen and appointed by CiCs rather than by the refugees themselves, undermining their legitimacy; some refugees felt that majhis were selected, not because 13 Community leadership here refers to how the community organises itself including through more political and/or violent means. Community leadership does not refer to NGO-supported community organisation. Humanitarian Policy Group 23