This policy brief examines the rise in gender-based violence and insecurity in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, and links it to the violent dynamics of the wider Bangladesh-Myanmar border region. It is based on an empirical study conducted between April and June 2024 in the refugee camps and adjacent areas along the border.

Its key findings are that the escalating civil war in Rakhine State in Myanmar and the resurgence of Rohingya armed groups in the camps have increased gender-based violence among Rohingya refugees, with both women and men affected and the younger generation severely affected and largely unprotected; that physical assaults and sexual violence against Rohingya women have become distressingly normal in the camps; and that forced conscription of Rohingya men in the camps has emerged as a new form of gendered violence as the conflict in Myanmar escalates. It argues that community-based interventions are project driven, with minimal scope for Rohingya women to assume leadership roles, and calls for holistic responses that address the cross-border roots of insecurity rather than conventional gender-based violence interventions alone.