access to Bangladeshi schools outside the camps; instruction in the Bengali language; and adequate school buildings. Myanmar has the responsibility to ensure the safe, voluntary and dignified return of the refugees and should take steps towards ensuring their citizenship rights and holding those responsible for serious violations to account. However, persisting with the ban on formal education is harmful to Bangladesh’s own interests and devastating for a new generation of Rohingya children and the future of the Rohingya community as a whole. In addition to Bangladesh’s obligations to ensure the right to education under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other human rights treaties, the 2018 Global Refugee Compact, which Bangladesh endorsed, calls for the integration of refugee children into national education systems. Rohingya Access to Education The Bangladesh government’s insistence that the refugees will return to Myanmar has led it to prohibit humanitarian groups from constructing permanent, brick-and-mortar school buildings in the refugee camps. Barred from opening schools, NGOs have since 2017 constructed about 3,000 “learning centers”: small, temporary bamboo structures that can accommodate up to 40 children at a time. Many learning centers “have rotted already and need to be replaced, since the little worms have been doing their work on the bamboo,” as a humanitarian official noted. Because the lack of space in the crowded camps limits the number of learning centers that can be built, most learning centers operate three daily “shifts,” of just two hours each, in order to reach a larger number of children. Designs for sturdier, two-story bamboo structures, which could accommodate more students using the same amount of land, had not yet been piloted when the 2019 monsoon season began. As of August 2019, only about 1,600 out of 3,000 learning centers had bathrooms or potable water nearby; none that Human Rights Watch visited had electricity, desks or chairs. Most children who attend the learning centers are 11 years old or younger, while fewer than 4 percent of children ages 14 and older attend. Some older children prefer unofficial Islamic religious schools in the camps. A girl who attended an Islamic religious school in 3 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | DECEMBER 2019