Arakan News Agency
The Arakan Rohingya National Council (ARNC), a newly established body composed of Rohingya diaspora leaders and youth activists from refugee camps, held an expanded meeting on Sunday with young people and local community members in the Cox’s Bazar camps. The aim was to build a unified voice representing the Rohingya people on both national and international levels.
A delegation of 13 ARNC members from various countries participated in the meeting during their visit to the camps, along with camp-based members, youth activists, religious scholars, teachers, and community figures.
During the gathering, ARNC representatives presented the organization’s vision and mission, emphasizing the importance of unity and collective action within the Rohingya community. The meeting also provided an open forum where community members were able to freely express their fears, hopes, and aspirations.
Attendees expressed their desire to establish a unified platform under the ARNC umbrella to strengthen their collective efforts in the pursuit of justice, rights, and dignity.
This meeting marks an important step toward empowering the Rohingya exile community and building a coordinated movement that reflects their collective will and enhances their presence on the international stage.
The Global Rohingya Students Union (GRSU) had earlier announced efforts to coordinate a meeting between major Rohingya organizations in preparation for forming a unified national voice to represent the community at international forums, ahead of a high-level United Nations meeting on the Rohingya issue scheduled for September in New York.
Previously, the ARNC had called for a roundtable discussion involving Rohingya activists and politicians to discuss the crisis and unify positions ahead of the UN conference on the Rohingya and other minorities in Myanmar.
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution last November to hold an international conference this year to seek sustainable solutions to the Rohingya crisis, based on a proposal by the Prime Minister of Bangladesh in September. Bangladesh has also urged Rohingya factions to unite before the conference in order to effectively raise their voice on the world stage.
Around one million Rohingya fled to Bangladesh after Myanmar’s military launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing in 2017. New waves of displacement resumed in late 2023 after renewed fighting between Myanmar’s military and the Arakan Army (AA), a separatist group that launched an offensive to take control of Arakan State and has since seized large areas of the region.
