Desperate Rohingya children at risk of prostitution

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Rohingya children are working punishing hours and reportedly being dragged into prostitution to support their families. 

In a tiny tent, home to three families, 16-year-old Noor Fatema shares the kitchen to cook lunch for her three younger siblings. With her parents feared dead, she’s now the head of the family.

Over 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled attacks by the Myanmar army since August. More than half of them are children. 

“They were setting the houses on fire, shooting and firing rocket launchers. That’s why we fled. My parents are missing. I don’t know where they are,” Noor tells SBS News. 

“My sister and her husband, and their children, were slaughtered.”

Noor was forced to take on the role of mother to ensure her other siblings made it out of Myanmar alive.

Her younger sister Bibi Morium, 14, says it was a terrifying ten-day journey to Bangladesh.

“We thought we wouldn’t survive. In front of us the military killed many people so we left very secretly,” she said. 

“On the way we saw many dead bodies.”

‘Negative coping mechanisms’

At 16, Noor is deemed old enough to head the household, but the pressure is enormous as aid assistance only comes every two weeks. It is the same story for many children in the Bangladesh refugee camps.

On every corner, young girls wash clothes in muddy water and fill jugs of water to drink. Others are out collecting supplies. Boys as young as five carry piles of wood on their shoulders.

With no one else to help them, they have no choice but to try and support themselves.

There are reports organised criminal gangs have been scouring camps looking for orphans, promising dubious jobs and exploiting woman for so-called ‘survival sex’.

UNICEF said in October that children in the chaotic camps were at risk from traffickers and people looking to exploit them. But UN agencies say they have no figures on how many are at risk. 

Save the Children’s Tim Muir, who works in the aid agency’s humanitarian surge team, told SBS News they are trying to reach out to children every day. But in a camp where tents stretch for kilometres, it’s a near-impossible task.

“They often fall into what’s called negative coping mechanisms so they might start child labour or even prostitution,” Mr Muir said. 

The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees Fillipo Grandi said earlier this month he was “worried about two sets of risk,” the BBC reports.  

“One is exploitation, including sexual exploitation, when people come with nothing … the other feature of this particular crisis is trauma that people carry with them.”

A young girl washes a cow in the refugee camps.

Kirsty travelled to Bangladesh with the assistance of Save the Children.

Save the Children is one of several charities involved in an emergency joint appeal to help people fleeing violence in Myanmar. All donations to Australia for UNHCR and The Australian Red Cross will be matched by the Australian Government. View a list of all the charities taking part and how you can help in the link below.