Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus has warned that his country can no longer provide additional support for the 1.5 million Rohingya refugees it shelters, calling on the international community to work on a roadmap for the voluntary return of the persecuted minority back to their homeland in Myanmar.

Speaking in Cox’s Bazar on Monday at a two-day conference marking eight years since the mass expulsion of the mostly Muslim minority from Myanmar’s Rakhine state, the Nobel peace laureate unveiled a seven-point plan aimed at securing the refugees’ safe and voluntary return.

“Their right to return to their own home and homeland has to be secured,” he said, urging all parties to develop “a practical roadmap for their safe and dignified, voluntary and sustainable return… The time is for action right now.” Yunus also appealed to donors to reverse declining funding, stressing that increased support was essential to sustain life-saving aid programmes.

His proposals call for an immediate end to violence in Myanmar, the creation of dialogue platforms to ease tensions between ethnic groups, and stronger involvement from ASEAN and regional powers to restore stability.

Yunus urged governments worldwide to stand firm against Myanmar’s “heinous crime of ethnic cleansing” and to reconsider their relations with the country’s military regime.

He also called for renewed momentum in accountability efforts at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court (ICC), insisting that justice was central to ending the genocide and ensuring the Rohingya’s safe return.

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Nearly 800,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in August 2017 following a brutal military crackdown that the United Nations has described as genocide.

Thousands more have arrived since. “The impact on our economy, resources, environment, ecosystem, society, and governance has been huge. I thank our host community and the people of Bangladesh for their wholehearted support and enormous sacrifices,” Yunus said.

Repatriation remains dangerous

Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng, reporting from Cox’s Bazar, said thousands of Rohingya marched on Monday to demand justice and repatriation.

“People here we’ve been talking to, they’ve been out demonstrating around the camps today. They’re calling for two things. One is for justice for the genocide in 2017, eight years ago to this day. Secondly, about repatriating them. They absolutely want to go home. This is at the top of everyone’s list of demands here,” he said.

Cheng added that ongoing fighting across the border made any repatriation effort difficult. “It’s still a very unstable situation inside Myanmar. So what Bangladesh or the rest of the international communities can do to get them home at this stage is very hard to see.”

The Cox’s Bazar conference comes before a UN conference in New York on September 30, but prospects for a safe and swift return remain slim.

Bangladesh has registered more than 150,000 new arrivals since early 2024, even as fighting in Rakhine worsens and global funding dries up following United States President Donald Trump’s freeze on humanitarian aid.

The World Food Programme, which relied on US contributions for almost half its 2024 budget, warned this month that 57 percent of families in central Rakhine cannot meet basic food needs.

Inside the camps, food shortage is a daily struggle. Refugees live on a monthly ration card worth about $12.

In 2022, the ICJ, the highest court of the UN, advanced a separate case against Myanmar, brought by The Gambia, that investigates responsibility for the genocide against the Rohingya.

The prosecutor of the ICC in 2024 requested an international arrest warrant for Myanmar’s military ruler, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, for the persecution of the Rohingya.