Humanitarian groups working in the education sector should work to replicate this
approach with the unofficial schools and tutors providing refugee children with the secular
education they want: in the Myanmar curriculum.
In another camp, Salah Uddin, a 57-year-old refugee and former high school headmaster in
Myanmar, joined with other former teachers and set up the Pioneer Rohingya High School
in July 2018, which teaches the Myanmar curriculum, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. five days a
week.2°2 Human Rights Watch met with Salah Uddin and three other Rohingya refugees, all
former teachers, who teach at the high school, and four students, ages 15 to 20. The Camp
in-Charge of Camp 7 in Kutupalong consented to the establishment of the school ina
disused building, but although “the floor is earth, some of the classrooms have no walls,
and the roof is tarpaulin,” the humanitarian education sector has not provided any support,
Salah Uddin said.
We haven’t approached UNICEF but we tried an NGO that works with them,
but they said they couldn’t support us. Nobody has come to help us,
because the government of Bangladesh has not agreed to allow middle and
high schools inside the camp, only learning centers. We are the only high
school. Our students come from camps 1 through 10, in other words, from
all over, even though we have no desks or benches.?°3
A teacher at the Pioneer school, Ali Hossin, 36, who formerly taught in a middle school in
Myanmar, said that staff at the humanitarian NGO that works in the education sector had
told him, “it is not allowed to provide formal education here, only kindergarten and grades
one to three maximum.”2% The teachers presented Human Rights Watch with a detailed
construction plan for the school building, including a list of needed materials and costs.25
Teachers at unofficial schools said that they were ineligible for support from international
donors because they taught the full Myanmar curriculum, which differs from and
comprises many more subjects than those approved by Bangladesh to be taught at the
202 Human
Rights Watch interview, Salah Uddin, Cox’s Bazar, February 14, 2019.
203 Human Rights Watch interview, Salah Uddin, Cox’s Bazar, February 14, 2019.
204 Human Rights Watch interview, Ali Hossin, Cox’s Bazar, February 14, 2019.
205 Letter from Pioneer Rohingya High School administration to Human
“ARE WE HUMAN?”
56
Rights Watch, February 12, 2019.