Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Masfiqur Sohan/NurPhoto/Sipa USA/PA Images. All rights reserved.
The forced migration of the Rohingya (referred to as Bengali in Myanmar) has received much attention since communal violence erupted in Myanmar in 2012. Most of the coverage has focused on the reasons for flight and the conditions needed for repatriation, particularly since the latest outflow in August 2017. In addition, the international media began linking Rohingya and human trafficking when mass graves with the remains of Rohingya were discovered in Thailand in 2015. Recently, a new narrative has emerged describing how criminal gangs and traffickers are taking advantage of the chaos and poverty during flight and in Bangladesh’s refugee camps to traffic Rohingya women and children for sexual and labour exploitation.
In this article, we identify the attributes of this latest narrative, its origins, and its implications for public and international policy. In conducting our analysis, we ask the following questions. What is the nature of the threat that trafficking poses to displaced Rohingya? How many cases of trafficking have occurred and what are the circumstances surrounding these cases? Should we be concerned about the scale of this phenomenon?
