and administrative procedures including securing permission to travel, recommendation letters, and ID cards. Most women have to rely on their male family members and/or brokers. This also means women often have to spend more money for these bureaucratic processes including paying translators to communicate with government officials. These factors can combine to mean that women often must place their trust in brokers to facilitate travel through irregular means. In some cases, the relationships between them and the brokers can become violent or exploitative. A lack of schooling and lack of access to income earning opportunities for women and girls can contribute to a diminished status within households and reduce their decision-making powers. In turn this means they do not always have control over their own migration, work or marriage decisions. It can also contribute to the occurrence of early marriage. As one Kaman interviewee noted, Access to education is limited and most girls cannot afford to continue their education (primary level). So early age marriages are high among our community. The lack of access to education and work for women and girls in Rakhine, then, combined with broader insecurities and immobilities within the community, impacts their status within the household, and can contribute to unsafe work and migration outcomes. 3.3. Rape and Sexual violence Wide-spread experiences of sexual and gender-based violence in Rakhine, and perceived risks of rape and sexual violence, can contribute to house-hold level decisions for girls to enter into early marriage and/ or to travel abroad. As expressed by interviewees, marriage with Rohingya men at home or abroad is often perceived as a way to keep Rohingya and other Rakhine Muslim women and girls safe from sexual exploitation. Further, experiences of sexual violence not only have severe physical and psychological consequences for women and girls, there can also be implications for household financial security. It can be harder for families to arrange marriages for women and girls who are known to be victims of sexual violence. These factors can contribute to household level decisions relating to early marriage. Throughout Myanmar rape has been used by security forces as a weapon of war and persecution of minority groups.46 In Rakhine State, in 2016 and 2017, rape was deployed as a military strategy against Rohingya groups and has been documented as a genocidal act.47 Further community level GBV workers interviewed for this research, reported that rates of sexual violence within communities is also high, although reporting rates are low. The extent of sexual violence has always been obscured by associated stigma, a lack of access to support services, and the lack of recourse to legal remedies. Online sexual exploitation is also reportedly on the increase. Interviewees for this research explained that online dating was common and some Rohingya women have experienced exploitation, extortion or been threatened by men overseas, who they have met online. For example, one woman interviewed in Buthidaung explained that her neighbour had committed suicide after explicit images of her were shared online and a series of threats were made by a man in Malaysia purporting to be her ‘boyfriend’. She was then blamed by members of the community. All these factors feed into community perceptions that Rohingya women should either remain protected inside the familial or marital home with limited access to the public sphere or would be safer with family or a marital partner in a different country. 3.4. Decision-Making Within the Household Respondents for this research reported that women travel outside the country for three key reasons: family reunion; work and marriage. They also explained that decisions relating to travel for women and girls were generally made by the father, eldest brother or older males within the household. They stated that mothers also contribute to household decision-making processes but in some cases their decision-making powers were limited. For example: Normally fathers decide, sometimes mothers do not agree to allow their daughter to travel aboard but they do not have power to oppose the fathers. In some cases, women and girls reportedly had little decision-making power themselves. In other cases, women themselves made the decision to travel. For example, Rohingya women from Baw Du Pha IDP camp in Sittwe said, Some girls do not want to go but their family forced them to marry Rohingyas who live outside of the country. Some women feel that there is no future in Rakhine, and they want to take the risk to escape from the open prison. Some interviewees explained other factors relating to population imbalances and dowry that contributed to 11