By Mubaraq Olayinka Ganiyu, PACS, University of Manitoba
Date: Dec 1, 2025
In Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee camp, silence has replaced the sound of learning. Home to nearly a million Rohingya people, the sprawling refugee settlements in Bangladesh are now witnessing a quiet crisis UNESCO-supported learning centres, once filled with the voices of eager young students, are closing their doors.UNESCO-supported learning centres, once filled with the voices of eager young students, are closing their doors. The closures, triggered by a devastating funding shortfall, threaten to rob an entire generation of children particularly girls of their only chance at education.
Education has always been a fragile lifeline for the Rohingya. Forced from Myanmar by persecution and violence, these children have grown up in exile, surrounded by poverty and uncertainty. For many, the small, makeshift classrooms scattered across the camps were the only spaces where hope could take root. Now, as financial support dwindles, those spaces are disappearing and with them, the dreams of countless children.
A Fragile Lifeline Cut Short
Since the establishment of the camps in 2017, UNESCO and UNICEF have worked to provide a semblance of normal life through education. These learning centres taught basic literacy, numeracy, and life skills, while also offering psychosocial support to children traumatized by displacement. For many students, the classrooms represented safety, stability, and possibility a way to imagine a life beyond the fences of the camp.
But in 2025, this fragile system is collapsing. UNESCO reports that without immediate funding, hundreds of learning centres across Cox’s Bazar will close, representing nearly 40% of all existing learning spaces in the camps, leaving more than half a million children without access to education.¹ For an already marginalized community, this is a devastating setback. This means that nearly 6 out of every 10 Rohingya children who currently attend learning spaces will be left without a classroom.
Teachers many of whom are volunteers from the refugee community are losing their positions. Classrooms that once served as safe spaces for learning are falling silent. Textbooks are scarce, materials are damaged, and without external support, schools are unable to continue.
For children who have already endured the trauma of war, statelessness, and displacement, this educational blackout is another layer of loss.
The Human Face of the Crisis
When a learning centre closes, it’s not just a building that disappears it’s the heartbeat of a community. Children who once gathered to learn songs, read stories, and play games now spend their days idle in the narrow, crowded lanes of the camp.
For girls, the consequences are especially severe. In Rohingya culture, traditional gender norms and safety concerns already make it difficult for girls to attend school. Many parents will only allow their daughters to attend if female teachers or escorts are available. When those teachers lose their positions or the centres close altogether, families keep their daughters at home or, in many tragic cases, marry them off early to reduce perceived risks.²
Without access to education, girls lose more than lessons. They lose confidence, independence, and the chance to make decisions about their own lives. Early marriage, domestic violence, and generational poverty become harder to escape.
Why Education Matters in Crisis
Education in emergencies isn’t a luxury it’s protection. In refugee settings, school provides structure, keeps children off the streets, and reduces the risk of exploitation, trafficking, and recruitment by armed groups. It offers counseling, promotes hygiene and health, and helps children recover from trauma, while giving families a stabilizing force during displacement.
UNICEF estimates that 83% of school-aged children in the Rohingya camps depend on its and UNESCO’s learning programs.³ When these services vanish, the consequences ripple through the community. Children without education are more likely to suffer from depression, join informal labor markets, or become victims of abuse.
Education also plays a vital role in long-term recovery. It equips children with the skills needed to rebuild their communities, whether through repatriation to Myanmar or integration into new societies. Without it, the Rohingya risk becoming a “lost generation” trapped in limbo without the tools to shape their own future.
Why the Centres Are Closing
The closures are not a result of neglect by UNESCO or local educators, but of a global funding crisis. Donor fatigue, shifting political priorities, and competing emergencies from Gaza to Sudan to Ukraine have drained resources from protracted crises like the Rohingya’s.
UNESCO and UNICEF rely on voluntary contributions from governments and private donors to sustain their programs. When those funds decline, education is often the first casualty. Emergency food aid and shelter understandably take precedence, but the long-term impact of cutting education is immense.
UNESCO’s 2025 report warns that without immediate donor action, more than half of the existing learning centres in Cox’s Bazar could close by the end of the year.¹ The organization has called for renewed global solidarity, urging governments, corporations, and individuals to prioritize education as an essential component of humanitarian aid.
The Forgotten Priority
Education receives less than 3% of total humanitarian funding worldwide, even though it is consistently identified as one of the top needs by refugee communities. For the Rohingya, that neglect feels like abandonment.
Each closure sends a clear message: that their future matters less. The children who once saw education as a light through the darkness are watching it fade, one classroom at a time.
This crisis is not simply about infrastructure or money. It’s about dignity, equality, and the right to learn. The international community has a moral responsibility to act not later, not after another emergency makes headlines, but now.
A Call to Keep the Lights On
To make this call to action meaningful, donors and the Bangladeshi government have concrete steps they can take: establish emergency education relief funds, prioritize female teacher retention to protect girls’ access, integrate Rohingya learning systems into broader national education planning, and introduce multi-year financing commitments to reduce boom-and-bust funding cycles. Even modest policy shifts could prevent thousands of children from losing access to learning.
The image of a darkened classroom in Cox’s Bazar is haunting. Rows of empty mats, a blackboard still covered in chalk dust, the echo of laughter replaced by silence. Yet it is not too late to change the ending of this story.
If the world steps up if governments renew funding commitments, if corporations embrace education as part of their social responsibility, and if individuals donate even in small ways these classrooms can reopen. The teachers can return. The children can learn again.
For the Rohingya, education is the only bridge between a painful past and a hopeful future. UNESCO’s learning centres were never just schools they were symbols of resilience. Closing them risks erasing that hope entirely.
The world must not let that happen.
References
¹ UNESCO. (2025). The Education Crisis in Refugee Camps: The Case of Rohingya Children in Cox’s Bazar.
² Human Rights Watch. (2025). Rohingya Refugees: A Struggle for Survival and Education.
³ UNICEF Bangladesh. (2025). Funding Shortage for Rohingya Refugee Education: A Call for Action.