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Human Rights Watch stated that the United Nations improperly collected data on more than 800,000 Rohingya refugees and shared it with the host country Bangladesh. Bangladesh passed the data to Myanmar, the country they fled, and called for an investigation.
In the past three years, UNHCR has registered hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladeshi camps, enabling Dhaka to provide them with the identity cards needed to obtain basic assistance and services.
But according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, refugees are usually unaware that the data they provide will also be used by the Bangladeshi government to submit detailed information about them to neighboring Myanmar authorities with a view to possible deportation.
“The UNHCR’s data collection of Rohingya in Bangladesh violates the agency’s own policies and exposes refugees to further risks,” Human Rights Watch’s Director of Crisis and Conflict Rama Faki said in a statement.
UNHCR refuted this claim, and spokesperson Andrei Mahcic told AFP that UNHCR “has a clear policy to ensure the protection of the data we collect when registering refugees around the world.”
The Rohingya did not require “informed consent”
However, Human Rights Watch said that refugees often do not understand that the collected data, including photos, fingerprints and biographical data, can be shared with Myanmar.
According to the report, this is particularly worrying in the case of the approximately 880,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, many of whom fled the repression carried out in Myanmar in 2017, which UN investigators said amounted to genocide.
The Global Rights Organization interviewed 24 Rohingya refugees from September 2020 to March 2021 to learn about their experience of registering with the UN refugee agency in Cox’s Bazar, as well as aid workers and other witnesses or participants in the registration. people.
The UN agency insisted that its staff asked Rohingya to agree to share their eligibility assessment data for repatriation and explained that regardless of whether they agreed to share the information, they would issue the so-called smart cards needed to obtain assistance.
It also stated that it has provided personal advice to ensure that the refugees “fully understand the purpose of this work”.
However, all but one of the 24 refugees told Human Rights Watch that they were never told that the data would be used for any purpose other than the establishment of aid channels.
They received a checkmarked receipt stating that they agreed to share data with Myanmar-but it was only available in English and only the three of them could read it.
Bell Kiswell, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, told AFP: “It soon became clear to us that the Rohingya we were talking to were not given informed consent.”
She urged UNHCR to “investigate and study carefully why the decision was made at that time.”
Wille acknowledged that the refugees interviewed by HRW “are difficult to generalize based on a small sample size.”
But she pointed out that there are reports that Bangladesh has submitted data to Myanmar on at least 830,000 Rohingya-almost all Rohingya refugees in the country.
“It’s hard to imagine that everyone would agree,” she said.
According to reports, Myanmar also used these data to approve the return of approximately 42,000 Rohingya.
These included 21 refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch, all of whom said they learned that their data had been shared when they were told that they had been allowed to return to Myanmar.
Myanmar does not recognize Rohingya as citizens, but says it welcomes those who agree to a bureaucratic status lower than official citizenship to return.
UNHCR emphasized that any return to Myanmar will be “based on the refugees’ personal and voluntary choices.”
Wille also emphasized that Bangladesh has not forced any refugees to return so far.
“But they are on the list, and now the Myanmar authorities know that they are in Bangladesh, so if the situation changes, this risk has effectively opened up,” she said.
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