NO SAFE HAVEN after around 87,000 people were forced to flee a similar – although smaller – military campaign.74 Today, some 884,041 Rohingya refugees live in refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar District. Of these, more than half (451,662) are children.75 LEGAL STATUS The vast majority of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have no legal status. This is because Bangladesh, which is not a state party to the UN Refugee Convention, refuses to recognise the Rohingya as refugees, and instead refers to those who arrived in 2016 and from August 2017 as Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals (FDMNs). Their lack of legal status creates barriers to exercising other rights, including to freedom of movement, access education and livelihood opportunities. While there is a small group of officially registered Rohingya – around 33,000 people who have lived in camps since fleeing military violence in the 1990s – in practice they face many of the same restrictions on their rights as newer arrivals.76 While Bangladesh has refused to officially recognise Rohingya as refugees, the sheer scale of the influx from 2017 necessitated efforts to undertake some form of registration. In June 2018, Bangladesh and UNCHR began a massive exercise to record PHOTO: DAPHNEE COOK/SAVE THE CHILDREN A facilitator teaches a group of Rohingya refugee mothers how to breast feed their babies with different positions in Cox’s Bazar District, Bangladesh. 14 the biodata and biometric data of each refugee, including fingerprint and iris scans. Refugees were then issued with an ID card with their photograph and basic information such as their gender and date of birth. Cards were issued to children above the age of 12 and families of younger children were issued with additional documentation confirming their children’s details.77 While the exercise has made it easier for the UN and NGOs to ensure “protection, identity management, documentation, and provision of assistance”,78 it is important to note that the ID cards do not confer formal rights on those who hold them. Under Bangladesh law, birth registration and the issuance of birth certificates is mandatory for all children born in the country “irrespective or race, religion, clan or sex”.79 When it comes to Rohingya refugees, implementation has been extremely problematic. From March 2015, following negotiations with UNHCR, Bangladesh agreed to begin registering Rohingya refugees born in the official camps in the country’s civil registry.80 However, following the influx of refugees in 2017, Bangladeshi authorities suspended birth registration completely.81 To date no new births have been officially recorded in the civil registry since 2017.82