3 Country by country snapshot 3.1 MYANMAR ROHINGYA CHILDREN IN MYANMAR Kassem* is 11 years old. He lives with his parents in Maungdaw, northern Rakhine State and goes to school near his house. Now, I’m in Grade 6. The school is near my house, so it’s fine for me to go, but it’s difficult living here… We don’t have many freedoms or opportunities. Travel within our quarter [in Maungdaw] is fine, but traveling outside is restricted… We don’t go out very much… I’m afraid of security checkpoints. When I grow up, I want to be a doctor so I can help people. I want to get freedom of movement and citizenship. And I want to bring back the Rohingyas who fled to Bangladesh. 14-year-old Abdul* lives in Buthidaung Township in northern Rakhine State along with his mother and two older brothers. access to high quality education is not available, and some students can’t afford to attend school. Outside of school I like playing badminton and football, riding my bike, and talking with my friends. Travel and freedom of movement is restricted here. It’s free for people from other ethnic groups but not for us because we are Rohingya. If we travel to faraway places, there is always fear police might arrest us. There is also the danger of landmines. The situation right now is stable, but there’s a curfew. The authorities arrest people if we are found outside [during curfew hours]. Also, food prices have been increasing rapidly [since the military coup]. I want a future without difficulties and to have a good business so I can earn money and build a house for my family. I want freedom, independence, and rights for Rohingya, including easing of movement restrictions. I’ve lived here all my life. I’m in Grade 8, and like reading books and seeing my friends at school. But Until 2017, the vast majority of Rohingya in Myanmar lived in the northern part of Rakhine State, where they have faced decades of discrimination and restrictions on their rights. While more than 730,000 have fled to Bangladesh following military violence, the UN estimates that there around 600,000 Rohingya remain in Rakhine State.42 Of these, 126,000 people – 69,000 of them children – are confined in ‘displacement’ camps or camp-like settings, where they have lived since violence forced them from their homes in 2012.43 The rest live in villages, where segregation, restrictions on movement, and communal tensions limit their access to essential services. Of the estimated 470,000 non-displaced Rohingya, around 173,900 are children.44 LEGAL STATUS Rohingya in Myanmar have faced decades of discrimination, violence, and marginalisation at the hands of the Myanmar state. Central to this is their lack of legal status: Myanmar refuses to recognise Rohingya as citizens of the country, despite previously recognising them before 1982, instead asserting that they are migrants from Bangladesh. In 1982, Myanmar enacted a new Citizenship Act, which came soon after a violent campaign to expel the population in the late 1970s.45 In Rakhine State, the Act was applied in a discriminatory and arbitrary way allowing the authorities to strip Rohingya of their citizenship rights, effectively rendering them stateless. When Rohingya handed 9