2 Regional overview 2.1 THE SCALE OF THE PROBLEM There are hundreds of thousands of Rohingya children living in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.1 Until recently, the vast majority lived alongside their families in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State. However from 25 August 2017, more than 730,000 women, men, and children were forced to flee to Bangladesh after the Myanmar military waged a devastating campaign of violence against the population, ostensibly in response to attacks on security posts by an armed Rohingya group.2 Those who fled joined around 300,000 Rohingya who had fled previous waves of violence in Rakhine State, including around 87,000 who had escaped an earlier military campaign starting in October 2016.3 Today, some 884,041 Rohingya live in refugee camps in Bangladesh.4 More than half – 451,662 are children. Meanwhile back in Myanmar the UN estimates that some 600,000 Rohingya remain in Rakhine State. Of these, an estimated 243,000 are children, around 69,000 of whom are confined in REGIONAL MAP 2 ‘displacement’ camps, while the rest live in villages and towns where they are subject to severe restrictions on their movement and are effectively segregated from the rest of society. 5 Among the other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries that host Rohingya – whether as refugees, migrants, or victims of human trafficking – Malaysia has by far the largest population. According to UNHCR, as of March 2021, there were 102,560 registered Rohingya in the country.6 While there are no figures publicly available for the number of registered Rohingya children, of the total 178,920 registered refugees in the country, around a quarter (45,720) are children.7 Rohingya groups estimate that there are likely several thousand additional unregistered Rohingya in the country.8 In Thailand, there are no official figures publicly available or the number of Rohingya in the country, however NGOs estimate there are between 3,000 and 15,000.9 Most have lived in the country for more than a decade and reside in urban areas, although more than 100 are currently held in shelters for victims of human trafficking.10 Of the