Adolescent Girls in Crisis: Voices of the Rohingyas

n August 2017 the long-running crisis involving the persecution of the Rohingya community in Myanmar escalated after an outbreak of violence in Rakhine State. Almost a million Rohingya were forced to flee Myanmar and now live in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar in neighbouring Bangladesh. Lives have been shattered and this report, the first to do so, focuses particularly on the lives and experiences of adolescent girls.

Commissioned by Plan International the report draws on data from research conducted in Bangladesh in April 2018. It explores how adolescent girls within two age brackets (10-14 and 15-19) understand the unique impact the crisis has upon them, and how they have responded to the challenges they face.

Despite the numbers of adolescent girls affected so profoundly by the ongoing Rohingya crisis, and of course, by many crises around the world, it is rare that either their own communities or the humanitarian sector at large pay much attention to them. This research is an attempt to rectify that: to acknowledge that girls and young women do have rights and that their ideas are worth listening to and acting upon.

Among the many learnings, we discovered that girls feel isolated. They have settled among strangers, and parents worry about their safety, keeping them even more trapped inside their new, makeshift homes.

75% of girls interviewed said they have no ability to make decisions about their own lives.