Nearly 1,50,000 Rohingya fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh in 18 months: United Nations refugee agency

Bangladesh has, over the past 18 months, registered the biggest influx of Rohingya refugees since the mass exodus of Myanmar’s largely Muslim minority nearly a decade ago, the United Nations said Friday (July 11, 2025).

The United Nations refugee agency said up to 150,000 Rohingya had arrived in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar refugee camps since early 2024.

Also read: On India’s international obligations towards Rohingya refugees | Explained

“Targeted violence and persecution in Rakhine State and the ongoing conflict in Myanmar have continued to force thousands of Rohingya to seek protection in Bangladesh,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Babar Baloch told reporters in Geneva.

“This movement of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh, spread over months, is the largest from Myanmar since 2017, when some 750,000 fled the deadly violence in their native Rakhine State,” he said.

Mr. Baloch hailed Bangladesh for generously hosting Rohingya refugees for generations.

Comment | A nuanced and compassionate understanding of Rohingya’s flight is the need of the hour

Even before the latest influx, around a million members of the persecuted and mostly Muslim Rohingya were living in squalid relief camps in Bangladesh, most of them after fleeing the 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar.

Those camps, crammed into just 24 square kilometres (nine square miles), have thus become “one of the world’s most densely populated places”, Mr. Baloch said.