An Agenda for a Dignified and Sustainable Rohingya Refugee Response in Bangladesh In the past year, Rohingya volunteers, especially female volunteers have reported instances of harassment and threats, at the hands of their own community, to prevent their engagement with the humanitarian response. Many Rohingya volunteers were forced to withdraw from their roles as teachers, health workers and community mobilisers citing safety concerns, impacting service delivery in the camps.165 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have faced restrictions since 1992 and have devised creative solutions to address their community’s needs over the years. These skills and capacities have not been adequately mapped and mainstreamed within the humanitarian response, allowing other actors such as humanitarian agencies, human rights groups, researchers, academia and media, among others, to routinely claim that space and represent Rohingya voices, overlooking the community’s role as legitimate humanitarian actors.166 3.3.2 Divisions and the need for joint advocacy Since August 2019, severe restrictions were imposed on NGOs working in the Rohingya camps curbing their ability to deliver humanitarian aid effectively as well as engage in collective advocacy and action on critical protection concerns. Many NGO activities were suspended167 some NGOs were banned168 from operating in the camps while others were warned against conducting anti-repatriation and antigovernment activities and encouraging longer-term stay of Rohingya refugees.169 A large majority of humanitarian workers are Bangladeshi nationals, mainly from Cox’s Bazar district. Yet, there is growing anti-NGO sentiment, and this includes a particular opposition to the presence of international actors, who are accused of prioritising Rohingya over host communities and taking away local jobs. This growing division among communities and among humanitarian stakeholders is concerning, and there is a need to promote solidarity and collaboration as a priority and as a fundamental and non-negotiable principle of work. In recent years, the civic space in Bangladesh has shrunk with many reported instances of crackdowns against NGOs. This has also led to the polarisation of civil society movements along nationalistic and political party lines.170 While service delivery by NGOs is tolerated, their involvement in policy-making processes is curtailed.171 The restrictive provisions of the Foreign Donations (Voluntary Activities) Regulation Act, 2016 and the draft Volunteer Social Welfare Organisations (Registration and Control) Act, 2019, have raised serious concerns about the ability of NGOs to deliver their mandate in an 165 Protection Working Group (PWG) and Gender in Humanitarian Action (GIHA) Working Group Cox’s Bazar, Strategy to Enhance the Protection of Volunteers in the Camps, March 2021, available at https://fscluster.org/rohingya_crisis/document/protection-sector-strategy-enhance 166 Jessica Olney, Nurul Haque and Roshid Mubarak, We Must Prevent a Lost Generation Community-led education in Rohingya refugee camps, PRIO (2019), available at https://www.prio.org/utility/DownloadFile.ashx?id=1838&type=publicationfile 167 Rohingya Camps in Cox’s Bazar: Activities of 41 NGOs halted for ‘misdeeds’, The Daily Star, 1 September 2019, available at https://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/rohingya-camps-coxs-bazar-activities-41-ngos-halted-misdeeds-1793728 168 Abdul Aziz, 2 NGOs banned for backing anti-Rohingya repatriation campaign, The Dhaka Tribune, 4 September 2019, available at https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/rohingya-crisis/2019/09/04/bangladesh-bans-two-ingos-forfinancing-running-anti-repatriation-campaign-among-rohingyas 169 Sullivan, supra n. 68. 170 Jasmin Lorch, Elite capture, civil society and democratic backsliding in Bangladesh, Thailand and the Philippines, Democratization, Vol. 28, Issue 1: Democratic Regressions in Asia, available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13510347.2020.1842360 171 Ibid. Act for Peace / May 2021 37