Abstract
This paper joins the growing body of work on Human Rights and Religion and examines the impacts of religious practices in protecting the socioeconomic and cultural rights of Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh. Based on an empirical study at eight different camps in Kutupalong, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, this article documents how the refugees, through different Islamic religious activities and practices, protect their cultural identities, negotiate with the local governing agents, and maintain solidarity with the host communities in their camp lives. This article also describes how, in these camps, many secular humanitarian projects often get challenged, resisted, or rejected by the refugees since those fail to address their networked relations with religion. Drawing from a rich body of literature in forced migrations, socioeconomic human rights, and religious studies in the Global South, this article investigates how religion and religious activities cushion the refugees from different forms of marginalization that are often engendered by secular development agencies. This article further offers several insights for practitioners and policymakers to ensure socioeconomic and cultural integration in human rights activities in refugee camps in the Global South.
Highlights
The modern world, at present, is witnessing an unprecedented upsurge in forced displacements due to climate change, conflicts, wars, persecution, economic hardship, etc. (Silove et al 2017).The emergence of refugee camps around the globe, housing millions of displaced population, is considered one of the biggest humanitarian crises of this century
This article is based on an empirical study that investigates displacement, cultural marginalization, and religiosity in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh
The first phase included a detail analysis of the historical background of the Rohingya Muslims, geo-political tensions around the refugee crisis, and collection of data from the growing inventory of the studies done on the existing Rohingya Refugee camps
Summary
The modern world, at present, is witnessing an unprecedented upsurge in forced displacements due to climate change, conflicts, wars, persecution, economic hardship, etc. (Silove et al 2017).The emergence of refugee camps around the globe, housing millions of displaced population, is considered one of the biggest humanitarian crises of this century. The greatest influx of 2017 resulted in a number of 909,000 stateless Rohingyas residing in Ukhiya and Teknaf Upazilas of Cox’s Bazar district in Bangladesh (Hussain et al 2020). The majority of these refugees are residing in 34 extremely congested camps with an uncertain future as Myanmar is declining to accept them as citizens. While the nationalists brought the slogan ‘Burma for the Burmans’ to the fore, Buddhist Monks added a religious backdrop to this slogan by saying ‘to be Burman is to be Buddhist’ (Ullah 2017) Such notions of a strong nationalist view backed by religion gradually marginalized other religious communities, especially the Rohingyas. This marginalization, stigmatization (Ahmed 2009), and oppression toward the Rohingya population happened in different forms ranging from banning citizenship to mass killing
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
