A harrowing report from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has documented extreme abuses against the Rohingya population in Myanmar, including the forced labor of children as young as six. In one instance, a child was compelled to clear human remains from the ground in Buthidaung, Rakhine State, at the site of a 2024 massacre in Hoyyar Siri village.
This child was among a group of Rohingya forced to construct a military base, a settlement for non-Rohingya residents, and a displacement camp on land where three Rohingya villages previously stood. In northern Rakhine alone, local monitoring recorded at least 2,353 instances of forced labor during January 2026, with 75 of those cases involving children aged six and older.
Ravina Shamdasani, Chief Spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office, noted that these documented cases likely represent only a fraction of the actual suffering. “We have received many reports of extreme cases of children being forcibly recruited as well as subjected to forced labour, early marriage, and sexual violence,” Shamdasani stated. She added that restricted communication and limited access to the region make it difficult to quantify the full scope of these ongoing violations.
The report highlights that forced labor has become a systemic issue, with villages required to provide workers to the Arakan Army for designated periods. This exploitation is part of a broader environment of violence. Approximately 600 displaced Rohingya are currently detained at a camp for survivors of the 2024 massacre, where they are held under guard to prevent information about the killings from circulating. Escapees have described dire conditions, reporting eight deaths within a few months, including five infants and a pregnant woman.
Detainees have provided accounts of severe torture, including being beaten with bamboo and rubber pipes, burned with cigarettes, and suspended upside down. One survivor recounted being left for dead in scrubland after captors disposed of his body, while his son, who had been arrested with him, died in custody. Families reported being coerced into signing statements that falsely attributed these deaths to natural causes.
The Rohingya, a Muslim minority, have faced decades of systematic exclusion, including the denial of citizenship under the 1982 law. This institutionalized discrimination escalated into mass atrocities during the 2017 military campaign, which forced over 700,000 people to flee into Bangladesh. UN investigators previously determined that this campaign was conducted with “genocidal intent.”
The situation has grown increasingly complex following the February 2021 military coup, which triggered a nationwide civil war. The Rohingya now find themselves vulnerable to abuses from multiple armed actors, including the military and ethnic armed groups like the Arakan Army. Shamdasani emphasized that the military has utilized a strategy of terror and surveillance to suppress opposition, noting that impunity for these violations only serves to fuel further violence.
International legal efforts to secure accountability remain ongoing but have yet to reach a conclusion. In 2019, The Gambia initiated a case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for alleged violations of the Genocide Convention. While the ICJ case focuses on state responsibility, it continues to process evidence, though no date for a final judgment has been set.
Parallel efforts include a request from the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor for an arrest warrant against former Senior General Min Aung Hlaing regarding the 2017 campaign. Additionally, courts in Argentina, Timor-Leste, and Indonesia have invoked universal jurisdiction to address alleged international crimes. While these various legal tracks are intended to strengthen the push for justice, experts maintain that current measures are insufficient to address the scale of the ongoing crisis. The report also notes that the new figures offer a glimpse into the scale of abuses Rohingya communities continue to face. The report also notes that sources in the report say that their detention is meant to prevent information about the massacre from spreading. The report also notes that today’s abuses are the latest chapter in a persecution that dates back decades, for the Rohingya. The report also notes that for decades, the Rohingya had been denied citizenship under Myanmar’s 1982 law, leaving most of the population stateless and subjecting them to restrictions on movement, marriage, healthcare and education. The report also notes that “What is clear is that since the coup, the military has pursued a strategy of terrorising, surveilling, and limiting the exercise of rights and freedoms against civilians more broadly as a means to crush opposition to their unchecked power,” she says. The report also notes that most of those displaced remain in camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, now the world’s largest refugee settlement, with little prospect of a safe or dignified return, nine years later.
Source: TRT World
