Prof Yunus, global leaders to meet at UN on Rohingyas

The high-level conference will be held at General Assembly Hall of the United Nations Headquarters from 8pm (Bangladesh time) on Tuesday.

Representatives from at least 75 countries and organisations, including heads of state and government, have confirmed their participation in the conference, Chief Adviser’s Deputy Press Secretary Abul Kalam Azad Majumder told UNB.

The meeting aims to sustain international attention, review the situation on the ground, and propose a concrete, time-bound plan for a sustainable resolution, including efforts to ensure the voluntary, safe, and dignified return of displaced communities.

The objectives of the UN-organised conference are to mobilise political support, sustain international attention on the crisis, review the overall situation, and address its root causes, including human rights issues.

The conference aims to review the crisis and exchange perspectives on the ground situation in order to propose a comprehensive, innovative, concrete and time-bound plan for a sustainable resolution.

Key priorities include ensuring the voluntary, safe, and dignified return of Rohingya Muslims to Myanmar.

Chief Adviser Prof Yunus will be among the speakers in the opening session.

Turkey will represent the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), while Kuwait will represent the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) at the conference.

Ahead of the meeting, Chief Adviser Prof Yunus held a meeting with UN Secretary-General António Guterres at the UN headquarters and discussed issues of mutual interest.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi and the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Myanmar, Julie Bishop, and Unicef Executive Director Katherine Russell held separate meetings with the Chief Adviser at his hotel on Monday and discussed issues related to the crisis.

Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency on Monday said voices from refugees must be at the heart of the conversation.

"Refugees have a dream: to go home to Myanmar—with dignity, safety and citizenship rights," said the UN agency.

Rohingya communities in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State are facing forced labour, food and health crises, severe restrictions on movement and escalating armed conflict, Amnesty International said on Monday as it warned against dangerously premature decisions to repatriate refugees from Bangladesh.

The conference aims to formulate a plan under which the more than one million Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh can return home to Myanmar after the majority were violently driven from the country by the military in 2016 and 2017.

Amnesty International conducted interviews with 15 Rohingya refugees who arrived in Bangladesh within the past year, as recently as July 2025.

The refugees came from both Maungdaw and Buthidaung Townships, which were both captured from the Myanmar military by the Arakan Army in 2024.

The organisation also spoke with UN agency staff, diplomats, researchers and international humanitarian organisations.

“Existing conditions in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State are nowhere near ready for Rohingya to return safely,” Amnesty International’s Myanmar Researcher Joe Freeman said.

“The Arakan Army has, to many Rohingya, replaced the Myanmar military as their oppressor. The military are using Rohingya civilians as cannon fodder to fight against the Arakan Army, and Rohingya armed groups are launching new attacks into the territory. The dramatic reduction of US aid has further contributed to a humanitarian crisis in which supplies are scarce and prices are skyrocketing.

“While it is vitally important to put an international spotlight on the Rohingya crisis with this conference, any attempt to push ahead with repatriation without addressing the acute dangers facing all communities – Rohingya, Rakhine and other ethnic minorities in Bangladesh and in Myanmar – could be catastrophic.”

‘This is not your country’

The northern part of Myanmar’s Rakhine State, which borders Bangladesh, is now under the control of the Arakan Army, while the Myanmar military still controls the state capital Sittwe, a key entry point for aid and transportation.

In November 2023, the Arakan Army, which is also loosely aligned with myriad opposition armed groups fighting against the Myanmar military since a coup in 2021, began an offensive that drove the military out of much of the northern part of the state. It now has effective control of Myanmar’s entire border with Bangladesh.

Long-standing tensions between the ethnic Rakhine Buddhist population of Rakhine State and the Rohingya Muslim population have been exploited by the Myanmar military, which worked with Rohingya armed groups and forcibly recruited Rohingya civilians to fight against the mostly Buddhist Arakan Army.

Due to the armed conflict, Rohingya and Rakhine civilians have been caught between the Arakan Army and the Myanmar military, which has blocked the delivery of humanitarian aid via the state capital Sittwe, and carried out deadly indiscriminate air strikes.

Earlier this month, in one such attack, a military air strike reportedly killed at least 19 Rakhine students while they slept.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya are internally displaced, and more than 150,000 Rohingya men, women and children have fled across the border to the Bangladesh camps in the last 20 months, according to the UN refugee agency, bringing the total number of refugees to an estimated 1.3 million.

Amnesty International and other groups have documented violations of international humanitarian law and mounting abuses against civilians by the Arakan Army, including indiscriminate attacks and arbitrary detention.

For Rohingya civilians, life under Arakan Army rule in Rakhine State feels painfully similar to life under the Myanmar military. Many allege it is worse, as they are constantly under suspicion of being tied to Rohingya militant groups, reports UNB.