“The war rages just across the border, while we endure sleepless nights in the refugee camps of Bangladesh,” recounts a 30-year-old Rohingya man, who hides in nearby villages to evade forced conscription by armed groups.

Myanmar’s civil war has crossed international borders. As we write this, Rakhine State in Myanmar, the ancestral homeland of the Rohingyas, is undergoing a seismic transformation. Since the collapse of a ceasefire in November 2023, Myanmar’s military junta and the Arakan Army (AA) have fought an intense war over the future of Rakhine State, within which the Rohingya were caught in the crossfire. The subsequent year of fighting has led to the death of more than 1,300 people, mass displacement, and a new territorial order. In 2024, AA made substantial territorial gains and now controls most of Rakhine state, including the entire border with Bangladesh. These dramatic shifts in power cast a long shadow over the already uncertain future of the Rohingya in Myanmar. The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh’s camps have also been drawn into the escalating war – turning spaces of refuge into an extended battlefield. The renewed transnationalisation of conflict has changed the patterns of gendered violence in the camps, manifesting itself in new refugee movements, the proliferation of Rohingya armed groups, forced conscription campaigns and the imposition of a morality driven and culturally inscribed masculinity, and high prevalence of sexualised violence against women and girls.  

Escalating violence has exposed the population in Rakhine to new threats from multiple sides. Extrajudicial killings, arson, rape, and other severe human rights violations against the Rohingya have been reported. A new wave of displacement followed as approximately 80,000 Rohingya sought refuge in Bangladesh in recent months. As of February 2025, the official figure of Rohingya living in the world’s largest refugee camp surpasses one million. These camps have only basic infrastructure, and the rights of the ‘Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals’, which is the official label for the Rohingya in Bangladesh, are minimal. They lack livelihood options and are almost totally dependent on humanitarian aid.  

The refugee camps in Bangladesh have become sites of violent power struggles among armed groups, most notably the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, Rohingya Solidarity Organisation, Arakan Rohingya Army, and Islami Mahas. These groups have created a climate of fear among refugees. They informally control the camps as ‘night governments’ and operate with near impunity both within the camps and in the wider Bangladesh-Myanmar borderland. 

Since early 2024, the Myanmar military, desperate to maintain control, had resorted to forcibly recruiting Rohingya men and boys in Rakhine, exploiting their vulnerability and statelessness. The armed groups active in Bangladesh’s camps also started to abduct Rohingya refugees to fight in Rakhine state. According to reports, over 5,000 male Rohingya were violently or voluntarily conscripted, trained in weapon use, and then sold to warring parties in Myanmar or became part of units of Rohingya armed groups actively engaged in combat. The conscriptions reveal a complex relation between refugeehood, masculinity, and nation-state formation as the armed groups created and instrumentalised societal expectations towards Rohingya men, particularly youth, who should demonstrate a “militarised masculinity” to protect their race, religion, and motherland. In this wake, Rohingya men themselves become highly vulnerable to violence, while patriarchal norms were reaffirmed and the social fabric in the Rohingya camps was transformed.   

A representative of a humanitarian NGO working in Cox’s Bazar explained another tactic used by groups forcibly conscripting Rohingya men: “If the brother or father or the husband doesn’t want to go to Myanmar and fight, the groups threaten those families, particularly the daughters or wives. Basically, if the men don’t join, the women will be abducted and raped.”  Rohingya women face threats and sexual abuse as leverage against their male relatives, but they also play a critical role in resisting abductions, hiding young men during recruitment sweeps or assisting their escape. Nonetheless, due to forced conscriptions, the deaths of fighters, and men’s onward movements (such as perilous sea journeys to Indonesia or Malaysia) many households in the camps are female-led, which amplifies women’s already existing vulnerabilities to violence.  

These dynamics reveal the significance of the camp-border-nexus. The new power of both the Rohingya armed groups in Bangladesh and the Arakan Army in Myanmar rests on their mobility and networks on both sides of the border. Cross-border trafficking of licit and illicit goods, including drugs, forced recruitment, human smuggling, and kidnapping for ransom have become part and parcel of the transnational war economies that continue to fuel violence in both countries.  

There is a need for a radically different way of looking at the Rohingya humanitarian crisis, especially if we are to understand its transnational manifestations and gendered nature. To date, the Bangladeshi government and international partners have viewed gender-based violence against Rohingya as a local humanitarian problem that mainly concerns women. While it is true that women and girls are most vulnerable, and most GBV incidents take place in the camps, this focus on violence against women and the site of the camps is too narrow. As sketched, new patterns of gendered violence have emerged, in which Rohingya men are the main targets, and which are clearly linked to armed groups’ cross-border entanglements. Addressing this transnational landscape of gendered violence and enhancing the protection of both Rohingya women and men is a challenge. Nevertheless, recent changes in Bangladesh’s policy, the formation of a Rohingya Task Force, and the upcoming UN summit on the situation of the Rohingya led by Bangladesh’s interim government, offer a rare opportunity to reset the official and humanitarian strategies that have been in place for almost a decade. The chance must not be missed to then also address the transnational roots of insecurity and gendered violence in this contested borderland.