Myanmar’s military-backed government said on Saturday (August 15, 2026) that more than 3,00,000 Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh are former residents of western Rakhine state and that it will accept their return once security conditions improve.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement comes as the Rohingya refugee crisis enters its ninth year, with hundreds of thousands of refugees still living in camps in Bangladesh after fleeing Myanmar in August 2017 when the military launched a crackdown following attacks by a Rohingya insurgent group on guard posts in Rakhine. Myanmar said it had verified 4,26,545 of the 8,28,824 refugees on a list provided by Bangladesh as of the end of July, and determined that 3,08,797 of those verified were former residents of Rakhine. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said 113,507 people could not be verified and that 4,241 people were found to have been involved in what it called terrorist activities. The ministry also rejected claims that more than 1 million people were displaced from Rakhine, saying that more than 5,40,000 people crossed into Bangladesh after the violence in 2017 while more than 2,00,000 remained in northern Rakhine.
The statement said it will continue working with Bangladesh to receive verified former residents when the security situation in Rakhine becomes more stable.
Plans to repatriate the refugees have not succeeded. Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed to a two-year repatriation process in 2018. However, security in Myanmar worsened following an army takeover in 2021 that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, triggering widespread armed resistance. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said in late July that Myanmar had agreed to take back 5,000 Rohingya refugees currently living in Malaysia as part of a repatriation programme.
