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The world’s most persecuted minority is on the move again. Thousands of Rohingya refugees have begun taking to the seas in rickety boats, desperate to escape hunger, insecurity, and hopelessness in the camps of Bangladesh and the conflict zones of Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Many will not survive the journey. Those who do will face detention, exploitation, or deportation across Southeast Asia.

The Rohingya crisis, long viewed as a domestic issue for Myanmar or a humanitarian burden for Bangladesh, has now become a regional security emergency. It is reshaping migration routes, fueling organized crime, and threatening political stability from the Bay of Bengal to the Straits of Malacca.

This was entirely predictable and entirely preventable

For years, Bangladesh has shouldered an impossible responsibility. It hosts nearly 1 million Rohingya, the vast majority living in the sprawling, overcrowded camps of Cox’s Bazar. When the first refugees arrived in 2017, Bangladesh was praised for its generosity. But eight years on, international aid has dried up, and global attention has shifted to other crises. Food rations have been cut by nearly half. Schools and health services are crumbling. Families are now trapped in limbo, stateless and forgotten.

Faced with starvation and despair, thousands are taking to the sea once more, reviving the deadly “boat people” crisis of the early 2010s. This year alone, according to the UNHCR, more than 4,500 Rohingya have attempted dangerous maritime crossings — a figure that could triple if conditions continue to deteriorate

The trafficking networks exploiting this chaos are thriving. Criminal syndicates are using the refugee camps as recruitment hubs, promising safe passage to Malaysia or Indonesia but delivering many into forced labor or sexual slavery. Women and children are particularly at risk. For countries already struggling with migration pressures, this growing exodus risks sparking new domestic tensions and fueling xenophobic politics.

In Indonesia, protests have erupted in Aceh against new boat arrivals, with local communities saying they have no capacity to absorb more refugees. Malaysia, already home to over 100,000 Rohingya, continues to detain and deport new arrivals under harsh conditions. Thailand, which long turned a blind eye to trafficking routes through its southern provinces, now faces renewed international scrutiny. The humanitarian crisis is spilling across borders faster than governments can respond.

But the root cause remains Myanmar’s continuing implosion. The junta has lost control of large parts of the country to ethnic armed groups, including the Arakan Army, which now holds most of Rakhine State. For the Rohingya, this has created a new nightmare. Many are trapped between the junta’s blockades and the Arakan Army’s exclusionary policies, including the outlawing of the very term “Rohingya.” Reports from the ground describe hunger, forced recruitment, and villages caught in the crossfire.

Repatriation, the long-promised solution, has become a cruel illusion. Neither the junta nor the Arakan Army offers any credible guarantee of safety or citizenship. Dhaka, meanwhile, is under immense pressure from its own population to move the refugees out. The interim government, led by Muhammad Yunus, understands the moral and diplomatic stakes, but cannot sustain this burden indefinitely without international help.

That help is not coming. Western governments have effectively abandoned the Rohingya file. The UN’s humanitarian appeal for the refugees is barely one-third funded. ASEAN, paralyzed by its doctrine of non-interference, has failed to move beyond statements of concern. And the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s political solidarity has not translated into tangible support.

This vacuum is dangerous. The longer the camps remain underfunded and ungoverned, the more they risk becoming incubators for trafficking, radicalization, and criminality. For Bangladesh, a fragile democracy already struggling with economic strain, this is a ticking bomb. For Southeast Asia, it is the next great migration crisis in the making.

The root cause remains Myanmar’s implosion.

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim

The response must now move beyond humanitarian management to regional stabilization. First, ASEAN and the OIC must jointly convene an emergency summit focused not on the junta’s legitimacy but on protecting civilians and containing the spillover. This should include coordinated maritime patrols to prevent trafficking, shared resettlement mechanisms for the most vulnerable refugees, and sustained diplomatic engagement with the Arakan Army and Myanmar’s National Unity Government.

Second, the US and EU should urgently restore funding for Rohingya aid, not as charity but as preventive diplomacy. Every dollar spent in Cox’s Bazar or Rakhine today will save ten times that cost in future crises of migration, piracy, and extremism.

Finally, regional actors must acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: the Rohingya crisis is no longer a moral question alone. It is a question of regional peace and security. The same forces that allowed genocide to unfold in Myanmar, impunity, indifference, and inertia, are now threatening to destabilize an entire region.

The world once said “never again.” But in the Bay of Bengal, “again” is already happening, slowly, quietly, and across borders.

If the international community continues to treat the Rohingya as someone else’s problem, the crisis will soon remind everyone that borders cannot contain despair.

• Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is the director of special initiatives at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington, DC. X: @AzeemIbrahim