By Jayalakshmi Itla Ragiri
In December 2023, Aisha Rahman, a Rohingya genocide survivor and human rights defender, was moved to the UNHCR Transit Centre in Cox’s Bazar as an emergency protection measure after years of threats, intimidation, sexual violence and violent attacks linked to her advocacy in the refugee camps. But the move did not end the threats. She continued to face reprisals, including online threats and the kidnapping of her child. UN Special Procedures mandate holders subsequently wrote to the Government of Bangladesh over the escalating threats, harassment and reprisals against her.
Now Aisha* faces another relocation. This time, back into the refugee camps. So does Akbar*, a former community leader who was abducted and tortured by armed groups and criminal gangs operating within the camps before being relocated to the Transit Centre. So does Akram*, a witness in ongoing international accountability proceedings who lost nine members of his family in a single day during the violence that forced the Rohingya to flee Myanmar, and was later admitted to the Transit Centre after an individualised protection assessment found he faced serious risks within the camps.
The UNHCR Transit Centre in Cox’s Bazar is an anomaly within Bangladesh’s vast Rohingya refugee response. Originally established for emergency reception, health screening, vaccination, temporary shelter and onward movement, its role evolved. It became a place where refugees with particular protection concerns were relocated when they could not be adequately protected within the camps. Of the roughly 200 families who have lived at the Centre over the years, 18 were relocated to the camps on July 16, 2026, marking the start of the process of dismantling the facility.
The impact of the closure is already being felt by residents who fear that the limited sense of safety they had built at the Centre is disappearing. Aisha described the process as UNHCR “manufacturing hopelessness” for residents who have already spent years navigating threats, displacement and an uncertain search for durable solutions. Peter, a Rohingya Christian human rights defender and member of a minority within an already persecuted community, said the Transit Centre was never a “safe haven”, but that residents were at least “somewhat safe” there. That sense of security is now being eroded. Peter said criminal gangs had already partially damaged the Centre’s fencing, which residents understood as a warning that threats and danger awaited them outside. Information received from residents already relocated from the Transit Centre indicates that these concerns about safety persist after their return to the camps. One relocated resident said she had agreed to the move after a UNHCR Protection Focal Point assured residents that security guards, Armed Police Battalion (APBn) officers and UNHCR staff would be present at the new location. “Based on those assurances, I agreed to the relocation because I believed UNHCR was taking appropriate steps to protect vulnerable families,” she said. But after the move, she said her family had not seen the promised security arrangements, including a regular UNHCR protection presence. “As a result, my family and I no longer feel safe and remain in constant fear for our security.”
The immediate trigger is the humanitarian funding crisis. But the closure cannot be explained by funding alone. It comes amid a convergence of severe funding cuts, Bangladesh’s refugee-management policies, the collapse of the US resettlement pathway, and UNHCR’s efforts to phase out an expensive and increasingly dysfunctional arrangement that has long existed as an exception to ordinary camp life.
Un(due) Process
Residents said they were informed orally on July 1, 2026,that the Transit Centre would be closed and that they would all be relocated to the camps. There was no written correspondence. They were told that the decision was driven by budgetary constraints. For residents who had arrived at the Centre because of specific protection concerns, the announcement raised an obvious question: on what basis were they now being asked to leave?
Warsan Shire, a British Somalian poet captures this bureaucratic violence with devastating precision: “At each and every checkpoint, the refugee is asked, are you human? The refugee is sure it’s still human, but worries that overnight, while it slept, there may have been a change of classification.”
Peter described the process through which people are admitted to the Centre. It involves multiple actors from UNHCR and the Government of Bangladesh, including protection officials, the Camp-in-Charge, community-based actors and security authorities. While these actors are involved in reviewing protection cases, residents are not always given a clear account of how the process unfolds or how the different assessments fit together. For many, this can mean repeated interviews, consultations and verification over several months, and sometimes years, before they are relocated to the Centre.
“You send an application to the UNHCR Protection Focal Point,” Peter said. “They send it to the Camp-in-Charge. The Camp-in-Charge refers it to the legal department. Then there is a community-based investigation through volunteers. They consult the APBn police. Only after all these assessments conclude that someone cannot safely remain in the camps are they relocated to the Transit Centre.”
Several residents described meetings in which they were told that the Centre would close and that they would be relocated to Camp 4. They recalled being asked whether they agreed to the move but said they were not given meaningful alternatives or clear assurances about how the specialised protection they had received at the Centre would be replicated in the camps.
One woman human rights defender recalled asking whether adequate protection would be available after relocation. The response, she said, was: “Maybe.” Another resident described the choice as stark: “They told us that either we go to the camps or we stay on the streets.”
In such circumstances, consultation cannot be measured simply by whether people were asked to say yes or no. A meaningful consultation requires more than communicating a decision that has already been made. It requires that affected people have a realistic opportunity to influence decisions that potentially affect their safety.
Shrinking of space
The space at the Transit Centre appeared to be shrinking long before the first families were relocated. Residents described a gradual withdrawal of services in the months preceding the planned closure. Until December 2025, cooked meals were provided at the Centre. Residents said this was discontinued following complaints about food quality, with families instead expected to access the general humanitarian assistance available in the camps. Several said this required travelling to Camp 7, an area they described as unsafe because of the presence of armed groups and other security threats.
Residents said they repeatedly requested a food or grocery distribution point within the Centre so that they could access assistance without travelling through areas they considered dangerous. They said those requests were not acted upon.
Other services, including basic healthcare, legal and protection support, child-friendly spaces, and mechanisms through which residents could directly raise protection concerns with humanitarian agencies, were also reported to have been discontinued. Residents said they were increasingly directed to access these services in the main camps.
For people who had been moved to the Transit Centre precisely because they could not safely navigate the camp environment, the distinction between availability and access was significant.
The physical space was also deteriorating. Residents reported inadequate maintenance of sanitation facilities, insufficient lighting in parts of the Centre, and reduced responsiveness to complaints about shelter conditions and other essential services.
But the shrinking was not only physical. Residents also described a growing constraint on their ability to challenge what was happening to them. Several said they feared that publicly opposing the closure could affect their prospects for third-country resettlement or their relationship with the institutions on which they depended for protection and assistance. Some were already engaged with UNHCR’s durable-solutions processes. In some cases, residents said they were explicitly told not to speak publicly about the closure.
Others described a more implicit fear; speaking out could jeopardise their access to protection, assistance or potential resettlement, even where no consequence had been expressly threatened. This fear is compounded by the precarious position of refugees who depend on humanitarian agencies for protection, assistance and access to potential resettlement. For people in such a position, the distinction between an explicit warning and an apprehension of consequences can be thin. The result is an already narrow civic space further constricted by uncertainty over what might follow if they speak.
Who protects them now?
The closure leaves residents with another question: who will be responsible for their safety once they return to the camps? The camps are administered by the Government of Bangladesh, while UNHCR remains the principal international agency responsible for refugee protection. Other humanitarian organisations provide essential services, while security within the camps falls to Bangladeshi authorities. For residents individually identified as requiring heightened protection, however, the lines of responsibility remain far less clear.
If someone relocated from the Transit Centre is threatened, attacked or forced to flee again, who is accountable? The Government of Bangladesh, as the authority exercising control over the camps? UNHCR, which identified the resident as requiring protection and facilitated their relocation? Or is responsibility dispersed across several institutions in a way that ultimately leaves no single actor clearly accountable?
There is an uncomfortable question here that borders on the legal concept of refoulement, even though no international border is being crossed: what happens when a person is returned to the very environment from which they were previously removed because they could not safely live there? Non-refoulement is conventionally understood as prohibiting the return of a person to a place where they would face persecution or serious harm. The situation at the Transit Centre is different in form: residents are not being returned to Myanmar. They are being returned within Bangladesh, from a specialised protection facility to the camp environment they had been removed from.
Yet the underlying question is familiar. Can a protection mechanism be withdrawn when the risks that necessitated it may still exist? Bangladesh is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, although the country has hosted more than one million Rohingya refugees for years. In practice, their protection is mediated through a patchwork of state authority, humanitarian arrangements and international protection mechanisms. The result is a system in which responsibility can be spread across institutions without a clear avenue for accountability when protection fails.
Recontainment
“The camps were never safe for those who spoke about accountability against camp authorities and against armed groups,” Peter said. That is perhaps the central contradiction of the Transit Centre’s closure. There is no shortage of documentation on the deteriorating security conditions in the Rohingya refugee camps. Reports have continued to document killings, abductions, recruitment and other abuses by armed groups, alongside restrictions on education, livelihoods and movement. UNICEF has reported serious human rights violations against Rohingya children, including abduction and recruitment by armed groups. United Nations Special Procedures have also raised concerns about the deteriorating protection environment in the camps, including the activities of armed groups and trafficking networks.
For years, the Rohingya refugee camps have functioned as spaces of containment. Refugees are confined to a protracted humanitarian system while durable solutions remain distant. Movement, livelihoods, education and security are heavily constrained, while humanitarian assistance itself has become increasingly precarious.
The Transit Centre was a limited exception to that system. It acknowledged that some refugees had heightened protection concerns that could not be adequately addressed within the ordinary camp system, and relocated them outside the camps because their circumstances required specialised protection. Now that exception is being withdrawn. Residents are being returned to the very camp system from which they were once relocated for their safety.
But the implications of this return extend beyond the withdrawal of specialised protection. It risks reinforcing the illusion that the camps are now sufficiently safe for residents who were previously removed from them because of heightened protection concerns. Yet the continuing evidence of violence and insecurity, alongside residents’ accounts of the threats they face, raises questions about the basis of that assumption. The return of these residents does not establish that the risks have disappeared; rather, it risks obscuring an unresolved protection crisis by treating their return as evidence that the camps are once again a viable place for them to live. The desperation produced by shrinking humanitarian assistance, limited livelihood and education opportunities, narrowing prospects for durable solutions such as resettlement, uncertain futures, and growing violence and insecurity within the camps is visible in the tragedies at sea. In April 2026, approximately 250 Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi nationals were reported missing after an overcrowded vessel capsized in the Andaman Sea. In July, two boats carrying more than 500 predominantly Rohingya refugees were feared lost off Myanmar’s coast.
There is another unresolved dimension to the closure. Many residents of the Transit Centre are also engaged in UNHCR’s durable-solutions processes, including resettlement interviews and assessments. For people who have spent years navigating the protection system and waiting for the possibility of a third-country solution, the closure raises questions about what happens to those processes once they are returned to the camps.
If budgetary constraints are the reason for closing the Centre, what responsibility does UNHCR have to account for the people most directly affected by the decision? And does the phase-out also change the relationship between residence at the Transit Centre and the durable-solutions processes in which many residents have been participating? These questions matter because resettlement is already an exceptionally narrow pathway for Rohingya refugees. For residents who have spent years waiting, the loss of the Transit Centre cannot be separated from the uncertainty surrounding their longer-term future.
The closure is therefore more than the dismantling of a temporary facility. It risks becoming a process of recontainment: returning refugees to a camp system whose continuing insecurity is well documented, while reinforcing the illusion that they can safely remain there.
In lieu of conclusion
Where, then, is the law for refugees? International human rights law recognises protections that do not disappear at a border. Yet, for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, these protections exist alongside the absence of comprehensive domestic refugee legislation and limited avenues for securing them in practice. The result is not an absence of rights, but a persistent gap between the protections recognised under international law and the domestic mechanisms through which refugees can meaningfully claim them.
The closure of the Transit Centre brings this gap into sharp focus. The question is not simply whether the Centre should remain open, but what safeguards exist when a protection mechanism is withdrawn despite continuing concerns about the safety of those who depend on it. What opportunity do the residents have to be heard, to have their individual protection needs considered, and to seek a remedy if the risks that prompted their relocation remain unresolved? Ultimately, who is accountable when the protection refugees depend on is withdrawn, but the conditions that made it necessary have not demonstrably changed?
*Names changed to protect the identity of the sources.
*An earlier version of this article was originally published in Frontline on August 28, 2026, and is republished here with permission.
Jayalakshmi Itla Ragiri is an Associate Lawyer at International Justice Counsel (iJustice), a public interest strategic litigation firm. She is a Chevening Scholar and holds an LLM in Rights, Conflict & Justice from SOAS, University of London. The views expressed are personal.
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