making noise. What is needed is to divide the children into different classes, based on their education levels.*°8 The Bangladeshi and the Rohingya instructors at one learning center said that the lack of textbooks, and the accompanying perception that no meaningful learning was taking place, contributed to a dropout rate of between 15 to 20 percent.*°9 An “Informal,” Inadequate Curriculum The humanitarian education sector, led by UNICEF, was aware that the learning centers offered poor quality education but unable to use either the Bangladesh curriculum due to government policy prohibiting it, or the Myanmar curriculum due to Myanmar government representatives’ reported lack of agreement to allow its use in meetings with UN humanitarian officials. UNICEF responded by creating an “informal” curriculum following “continuous engagement with the Government of Bangladesh.”*"° According to the UNICEF representative in Bangladesh, as of August 2019, “we are trying to provide education within tight restrictions ... but we simply cannot wait until conditions are perfect ... What we ask of both governments is flexibility to allow the use of their educational resources — for example, curriculum, assessments and training manuals — in order to offer the best possible quality learning for Rohingya children”.* The development of the informal curriculum proved more time-consuming and difficult than the children’s agency projected.*2 The existence of even an informal curriculum represents an improvement over the status quo ante. According to UNICEF, the informal learning program marked a “qualitative jump” toward quality education as compared to the beginning of the humanitarian education response, when learning centers lacked “materials or a curriculum framework of any 108 Human Rights Watch interview with Rumana Akhter, Cox’s Bazar, February 7, 2019. 109 Human Rights Watch interview with Mohammad Ilias and Shahina Akhter at a learning center in the Cox’s Bazar camps, February 7, 2019. 110Joint Response Plan for the Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis, March-December 2018, p. 60, https://www.unocha.org/sites/unocha/files/JRP for Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis 2018.PDF (accessed May 16, 2019); information about UN and Myanmar officials’ meetings is from an email to Human Rights Watch from an INGO, August 28, 2019. 111 UNICEF, Beyond Survival: Rohingya Refugee Children in Bangladesh Want to Learn, August 2019, p. 13, https://www.unicef.org/bangladesh/media/2536/file/UNICEF%20Advocacy%2o0Alert%202019.pdf (accessed November 20, 2019). 112 UNICEF, Evaluation of UNICEF’s Response to the Rohingya Refugee Crisis in Bangladesh, Vol. 1, November 2018, pp. 41-42. 37 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | DECEMBER 2019