Cox’s Bazar
On 28 October 2026, 115 military officers reached the RRRC office in Cox’s Bazar. They came from many countries. They came to study the Rohingya crisis on the ground.
The team is part of National Defence Course-2026. Bangladesh’s National Defence College runs the course. The stop sat inside Internal Study Tour 2. RRRC Commissioner Mohammad Mizanur Rahman took the briefing.
He spoke about the political knot around the Rohingya crisis. He also spoke about life inside the camps. Bangladesh still shelters these families, he told them. The state still sends help.
Then he took them back to 2017. That year Rohingya families crossed in great numbers. They carried children. Many had little more than the clothes they wore.
People in Bangladesh did not shut the gate. Host families in Cox’s Bazar shared their rice. They made room in the shade. Rahman said that open hand still holds weight.
Yet local unity kept many small children alive through the first hard months. After that, he described the desk work that visitors rarely see. The RRRC office lines up the agencies in the camps. Food has to move on the same day as the clinics.
So do the learning spaces. When one link slips, a family feels it by evening. He also set out the politics beyond the camp fence. Regional capitals still shape the road home, and foreign capitals do too.
Why return home sits at the heart of the Rohingya crisis
One officer asked how a fix could last. Rahman did not dodge the question. The world already names three durable answers, he said. People can go home by their own choice.
They can join the host society as locals. Or another country can take them in and start them again. However, Bangladesh does not treat those three doors as equal. The government accepts one lasting answer.
Rohingya families should return to Myanmar. The return has to be their own choice. Safety has to come with that choice. Dignity has to stay intact, and the return has to last.
Aid by itself cannot end the Rohingya crisis, Rahman said. A sack of rice keeps a person standing. It does not give back a house in one’s own town. A name does not come home in that sack either.
Therefore the world has to stay engaged for the long run. States have to share the duty. Someone has to deal with the causes inside Myanmar. Those causes pushed families out, and they still block the way back.
Bangladesh will keep giving humanitarian help, he said. At the same time, Dhaka will keep pressing for return. The ask is plain. Families should go home only when the path is safe.
Choice has to lead that walk. Dignity has to stay whole. He also asked foreign governments to keep the Rohingya crisis in view. Diplomacy should grow stronger, not fade.
Rohingya families want their rights back on their own soil. They want their own name back. A child should be able to plan a future there. That hope is warm, but it is still careful.
The course members got a ground lesson that day. They stood near one of the longest displacement crises in the world. They heard the camp reality from the office that lives with it. Humanitarian help alone cannot close the crisis, and politics still blocks the gate home.
A map does not sweat. Cox’s Bazar does. Since 2017, host communities have carried a quiet weight. They offered space when the footpaths filled.
They still live beside the camps. Gratitude fits here. So does honesty. A shelter saves a life, but a shelter does not give back a birthright.
The officers left with Rahman’s line still in the room. Bangladesh will not drop the aid. Bangladesh will not drop the call to go home. The only durable door Dhaka accepts leads back to Myanmar.
That door opens when return is safe. People must choose it themselves. The path has to be worthy of them. Until then, Cox’s Bazar keeps the light on, yet the Rohingya crisis has already asked them to wait too long.
