2 Regional overview
2.1 THE SCALE OF THE PROBLEM
There are hundreds of thousands of Rohingya
children living in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Malaysia,
Thailand, and Indonesia.1 Until recently, the vast
majority lived alongside their families in Myanmar’s
northern Rakhine State. However from 25 August
2017, more than 730,000 women, men, and children
were forced to flee to Bangladesh after the
Myanmar military waged a devastating campaign
of violence against the population, ostensibly in
response to attacks on security posts by an armed
Rohingya group.2 Those who fled joined around
300,000 Rohingya who had fled previous waves of
violence in Rakhine State, including around 87,000
who had escaped an earlier military campaign
starting in October 2016.3
Today, some 884,041 Rohingya live in refugee
camps in Bangladesh.4 More than half – 451,662 are
children. Meanwhile back in Myanmar the UN
estimates that some 600,000 Rohingya remain in
Rakhine State. Of these, an estimated 243,000 are
children, around 69,000 of whom are confined in
REGIONAL MAP
2
‘displacement’ camps, while the rest live in villages
and towns where they are subject to severe
restrictions on their movement and are effectively
segregated from the rest of society. 5
Among the other Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) countries that host Rohingya –
whether as refugees, migrants, or victims of
human trafficking – Malaysia has by far the largest
population. According to UNHCR, as of March
2021, there were 102,560 registered Rohingya in
the country.6 While there are no figures publicly
available for the number of registered Rohingya
children, of the total 178,920 registered refugees in
the country, around a quarter (45,720) are children.7
Rohingya groups estimate that there are likely
several thousand additional unregistered Rohingya
in the country.8 In Thailand, there are no official
figures publicly available or the number of Rohingya
in the country, however NGOs estimate there are
between 3,000 and 15,000.9 Most have lived in the
country for more than a decade and reside in urban
areas, although more than 100 are currently held
in shelters for victims of human trafficking.10 Of the