By Gerhard Hoffstaedter and Agustia Rahmi

---

When a boat carrying more than 260 Rohingya refugees ran aground in East Aceh on 5 January 2025, the headlines reported what they always report: the number of passengers, the days at sea, the broken engine. What they did not report was how a 65-year-old man named Shamsul, unable to walk, had to be physically carried from the vessel by his son. Or how his son was subsequently sentenced to more than five years in prison for alleged involvement in smuggling, leaving his father in a bamboo shelter with no one trained or tasked to help him.

We have observed the changing nature of who steps off these wooden fishing boats in the last few year. Women and children now make up roughly 73 per cent of arrivals. Children accounted for 44 per cent of all sea passengers in 2024, up from 37 per cent the year before. Elderly refugees, persons with disabilities, and unaccompanied minors are boarding in growing numbers to cross the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal, what the UNHCR has called amongst the deadliest in the world, with nearly one in five people reported dead or missing at sea in 2025. Yet the humanitarian response remains designed for an imagined default: the able-bodied young man.

In 2023, two boys, aged 7 and 8, who survived separate sea journeys to Aceh, had both been confined to the bottom of overcrowded wooden boats, unable to move. Mohib recounted he received no food during the entire journey, surviving on flattened rice his family had bought before departure. Mohammad meanwhile recalled vomiting blood and being denied water by the boat captain.

What stayed with me was not only the deprivation but what the journey had done to their senses. Mohib described “horrible sounds during the night.” Mohammad remembered “shouting and swearing sounds and peeing smells.” When I asked what they wanted, both gave answers of disarming clarity: Mohib said he wished he could get access to education; both asked to be moved somewhere their families could live with dignity. These boys survived, but in March 2024, at least 27 children drowned when a single boat capsized off West Aceh.

For elderly Rohingya, the sea compounds every existing vulnerability. Nurul, an 80-year-old woman who arrived in East Aceh in January 2025, recounted that she sat in one position throughout the journey, her legs too weak to stand, her eyesight failing. She depended on a grandson and strangers. “Many people ignored me,” she said. “Even my daughters did not pay attention.” Another man, aged 68, spent over two weeks at sea. During storms, he could not move or protect himself. “Everyone panicked,” he told me. “I could only hold my daughter and pray.”

Elderly men and women have to stay in the confined spaces below deck, where the extreme heat, darkness, and noise causes intense suffering. One described vomiting from exhaustion, unable to bathe, sleep, or see the sea outside. “Inside, we could not see the sea,” she said. “The fear was even greater.”

Upon arrival, conditions barely improve. Nurul had to climb a wooden staircase to reach her sleeping area. The shelter is bamboo and tarpaulin, reinforced with coconut palm leaves. There are currently several elderly refugees in shelters in Aceh, none of which have been built with their needs in mind.

Meanwhile, Sultan, a 14-year-old with an eye impairment, fled Myanmar with his parents and two younger brothers, who also have visual disabilities. Before reaching the boat, brokers held them in the jungle for five days. Aboard the vessel, Sultan was pressed against his mother, unable to move, eat, drink, or sleep properly. “Those moments were unbearable,” he said. “I was completely frightened.” He knew that people had died on journeys like his.

These stories are not anomalies. They reveal a structural gap for the most vulnerable refugees. Rescue protocols assume passengers can move and communicate upon disembarkation. Shelters are built without reference to age, disability, or chronic illness. Data collection by authorities counts boats and bodies but not the specific vulnerabilities within them.

The boats that arrived in January 2025 had been intercepted and redirected by the Indian, Malaysian, and Thai navies in sequence. Boats are escorted, inspected, resupplied with food and water, then pushed on toward someone else’s coastline. At no point during any of these encounters did anyone ask the question ‘what does an 80-year-old women or a disabled teenager need?’ The question was always the same: how do we move them along?

What is needed is a disaggregated response that plans for the people actually on these boats: accessible shelters, child protection from the first moment of disembarkation, identification of elderly and disabled passengers before their support networks are dismantled by the criminal justice systems meant to combat smuggling. The Rohingya boat response in Indonesia remains critically underfunded, with UNHCR receiving barely a third of the USD 2.2 million required for 2025.

The sea does not discriminate between those it carries. But the systems that receive them do and the most vulnerable are paying the highest price.

*All names have been changed to maintain their anonymity

This article was developed during a writeshop in Kuala Lumpur for the Maritime Refugee Lab, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Gerhard Hoffstaedter is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Queensland, specializing in refugee studies in Southeast Asia. He co-leads the Maritime Refugee Lab, documenting and theorizing maritime refugee journeys and experiences.

Agustia Rahmi is the Founder and Executive Director of Yayasan Solidaritas Aksi Peduli (YSAP) in Aceh, Indonesia. She has over nine years of experience in humanitarian protection, social cohesion, and peacebuilding, focusing on the inclusion and well-being of Rohingya refugees and host communities in Aceh.

---

The views expressed in this article belong to the author/s and do not necessarily reflect those of the Refugee Law Initiative. We welcome comments and contributions to this blog – please comment below and see here for contribution guidelines.