What a decade of research on Rohingya women reveals — and why every Muslim needs to know it
The Invisible Half • INTRODUCTION
A Woman No One Counted
Somewhere in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh — in a camp that houses more people than the entire city of Amsterdam — a woman gave birth last night. She may have done it at home, in the dark, with a neighbour or a traditional birth attendant nearby, because reaching a clinic would have required her husband’s permission, a safe escort, and a journey she did not feel she could make alone.
She is not in any government’s census. She has no citizenship, no passport, no legal standing in the country where she lives. She is one of over one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh — a number so large it no longer sounds like people.
She has a name. She has a history. She has survived things most of us cannot imagine.
And until very recently, almost no one in the academic world had systematically tried to understand what her life actually looks like.
Over one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Most of us could not name a single one.
This introduction post is about a piece of research — a systematic literature review — that tried to change that. It gathered every rigorous study written in English about Rohingya women’s experiences between 2014 and 2025, synthesised what they found, and identified what we still don’t know.
What follows is not an academic summary. It is an attempt to tell you, in plain language, what the research found, why it matters, and what it means for us as a Muslim community that believes in justice, in the ummah, and in our obligation to bear witness.
Who Are the Rohingya Women This Research Is About?
Before we talk about what the research found, it helps to understand who it is about.
The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority who have lived in Myanmar’s Rakhine State for generations — centuries, by most historical accounts. In 1982, Myanmar’s government passed a citizenship law that effectively made them stateless overnight: not citizens of Myanmar, not recognised as refugees anywhere else, not entitled to work, travel, or access services legally in most of the countries where they now live.
In August 2017, Myanmar’s military launched a campaign of violence against Rohingya villages that the United Nations later described as bearing the hallmarks of genocide. In a matter of weeks, more than 700,000 people fled across the border into Bangladesh on foot. Women and girls who survived reported mass rape, killings of family members, and the burning of their homes.
They arrived in Cox’s Bazar, where existing refugee settlements were immediately overwhelmed. Today, over one million Rohingya live there — in what is now the largest refugee camp complex in the world. Many have been there for years. None know when, or whether, they will be able to go home.
Women and girls make up roughly half of this population. They arrived carrying physical wounds, psychological trauma, and the particular vulnerability that comes with being female, Muslim, stateless, and displaced — all at once.
What the Research Did
A systematic literature review is a specific type of research. Rather than going out and interviewing people directly, it gathers, assesses, and synthesises all the existing studies on a topic — the way a skilled editor might read every article ever written on a subject and produce a clear, honest summary of what they all say.
This review searched five academic databases and found 472 records. After removing duplicates, 105 unique studies remained. These were then assessed for relevance using an AI-assisted tool, and 37 were shortlisted for detailed review. Following careful verification to ensure all sources were real, traceable, and accurately described — a step that excluded three unverifiable papers — 34 studies were included in the final synthesis.
Those 34 studies were published between 2014 and 2025. They covered topics ranging from maternal health and reproductive rights, to gender-based violence, mental health, education, livelihoods, and the social and cultural experiences of Rohingya women in displacement.
The review followed internationally recognised standards for systematic reviews (called PRISMA 2020 guidelines) — the same standards used in medical and public health research globally. It was not a casual reading of a few articles. It was a structured, transparent, methodical attempt to map what we know.
| 472 Studies initially identified across five databases | 34 Studies that met rigorous inclusion criteria after verification |
| 2014–2025 A decade of research synthesised in one review | 8 themes From maternal health to livelihoods, violence to education |
What the Research Found
Across 34 studies, spanning a decade of research from multiple countries and disciplines, the evidence pointed consistently in one direction: Rohingya women are facing not one crisis but many, simultaneously, and largely in silence.
Here is what the research found, theme by theme — not in academic language, but in human terms.
Their bodies are at risk — and the barriers to care are not medical
Maternal mortality among Rohingya women has been documented as shockingly high — not because medicine is unavailable, but because the systems around women prevent them from reaching it. Studies found that women needed their husband’s permission to attend antenatal appointments, to access contraception, and to seek emergency obstetric care. Distance, cost, cultural restrictions on movement, and a lack of female providers all contributed.
One research team evaluated a midwife-led birthing centre in a Cox’s Bazar camp. Of 267 births they documented, 70 required referral for serious complications. The centre worked. The challenge was getting women to it — and keeping them coming back.
Contraceptive prevalence sat at around 50% among married women in some studies — far lower than it could be. The barriers were not primarily religious. They were social: the requirement for male approval, lack of information, limited access to female providers, and a culture of silence around women’s reproductive lives.
What the numbers mean in practice When a woman cannot access emergency obstetric care without first obtaining her husband’s permission — and her husband is not home, or does not give permission, or does not believe she needs it — a preventable death becomes possible. This is not a hypothetical. It is what the research documents.
Violence did not end when they crossed the border
The 2017 military campaign involved systematic sexual violence used as a weapon of ethnic cleansing. Women who survived reported gang rape, sexual torture, and witnessing violence against family members. These are not peripheral details — they are documented findings from peer-reviewed studies.
But the research also shows that violence did not stop at the Myanmar border. In the camps in Bangladesh, intimate partner violence was documented at high rates, often normalised within communities and rarely reported. One study conducted in-depth interviews with six pregnant women who were experiencing violence from their husbands — not because six was the extent of the problem, but because the stigma and fear surrounding the issue made reaching women so difficult.
For women who fled to Malaysia — where an estimated 100,000 to 180,000 Rohingya live without legal status — the journey itself was dangerous. Studies documented sexual violence during boat crossings, trafficking by smugglers, and exploitation in detention centres.
Across all settings, survivors faced the same barriers to seeking help: stigma, fear of community judgment, lack of awareness about available services, economic dependence on the perpetrator, and inadequate legal remedies.
Their minds carry what no one talks about
The mental health findings are among the most quietly devastating in the review. High levels of trauma, depression, anxiety, and psychosocial distress were documented across multiple studies — connected to the violence women experienced in Myanmar, the losses they endured during flight, and the ongoing stressors of camp life: overcrowding, insecurity, restricted movement, and an uncertain future.
Pregnant and postpartum women showed particularly high rates of depression and anxiety. And yet mental health services in the camps remained severely limited, stigma around seeking help was significant, and many women had no culturally appropriate space to speak about what they were carrying.
One bright finding: a psychosocial support group programme for 260 pregnant women showed measurable improvements in maternal wellbeing using validated psychological scales. Group-based community support works — when it exists.
Their daughters are being pulled out of school
Rohingya children in Bangladesh cannot receive a formally certified education. The Bangladeshi government does not recognise the Myanmar curriculum, and for years refused to allow Rohingya children to attend Bangladeshi schools. Learning centres run by NGOs filled some of the gap — but they are informal, overcrowded, under-resourced, and the COVID-19 pandemic shut most of them down for extended periods.
Girls face additional layers of barrier. Cultural norms restricting mobility mean adolescent girls are often kept home rather than sent to learning centres. Early marriage pulls them out entirely. When family resources are limited, boys’ education is prioritised.
The pandemic made this worse. Studies found that when learning centres closed, girls were at increased risk of permanent dropout — and early marriage rates were observed to rise.
Their economic options have been taken from them
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are legally prohibited from formal employment. The fishing, farming, and small businesses that sustained families in Myanmar are gone. What remains is informal work — often exploitative, sometimes dangerous, and entirely unprotected by law.
For women, the constraints are compounded by gender norms restricting movement and cultural barriers to economic independence. One research team described the emergence of what they called ‘shadow markets of protection’ — informal arrangements, including forced or transactional marriages, through which families tried to secure some degree of economic survival under conditions of extreme statelessness. These are not choices freely made. They are the consequences of legal exclusion and poverty.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, over 63% of adolescent Rohingya girls in one study reported experiencing food shortages in their households. Sixty-three percent.
Their voices are being filtered before they are heard
Perhaps the most consistent finding across the entire review — cutting across every theme — is this: Rohingya women’s access to information, services, and support is mediated almost entirely through male gatekeepers.
Women with restricted mobility could not attend community meetings where information was shared. They relied on husbands, fathers, or brothers to bring them news — and that news was filtered, delayed, or withheld. During the COVID-19 pandemic, studies showed that older women and women with greater mobility restrictions were significantly more likely to receive misinformation, because they had no direct access to accurate sources.
Community leadership in the camps — the majhis, or camp block leaders — was almost entirely male. Women’s concerns reached decision-makers only when a man chose to raise them.
The most consistent finding in the research: Rohingya women’s voices reach the outside world only when a man allows them to.
What the Research Does Not Yet Know
A systematic review is as honest about what is missing as about what has been found. This review identified several significant gaps in the evidence.
• Geography: 76.5% of all included studies focused on Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Almost nothing is known — from rigorous research — about Rohingya women’s experiences in Thailand, India, Indonesia, or other host countries. We are building a picture of one corner of a much larger reality.
• Time: Almost all studies were cross-sectional — a snapshot in time. Almost none followed the same women over months or years to understand how their experiences and health trajectories changed. We know what displacement looks like; we do not yet understand what prolonged displacement does.
• Invisible populations: Older women, women with disabilities, women living outside camps — these groups appear rarely or not at all in the research. One study described them as ‘invisible to the humanitarian response.’ They are invisible in the research too.
• What actually works at scale: The interventions that were evaluated — midwife-led birthing centres, referral systems, psychosocial support groups — showed promising results. But all were small pilots. There is almost no evidence yet on what happens when you try to scale them up.
A note on what this research is and is not
This systematic review is honest about its own limitations. Most studies relied on abstracts rather than full published papers. The review was not pre-registered before it began. Some relevant research may have been missed. These limitations do not invalidate the findings — they contextualise them. The picture the research paints is credible, even if incomplete. The gaps it identifies are real.
Why This Research Matters for Muslim Communities
You may be wondering why a systematic academic review of Rohingya women’s experiences is the foundation for an Islamic educational article series. The answer is simple: we cannot speak meaningfully about justice if we do not know the facts. We cannot call the ummah to action if we are speaking in generalities. We cannot challenge harmful practices if we are vague about what those practices are and what they produce.
This research gives us specifics. It names the barriers. It documents the outcomes. It identifies what works.
And when we look at those specifics with Islamic eyes, we see something that should disturb every Muslim community in the world — not because the Rohingya are uniquely different from us, but because the patterns documented in Cox’s Bazar are not unique to refugee camps. The male gatekeeping of women’s healthcare. The normalisation of intimate partner violence. The equation of female restriction with female protection. The silencing of women’s voices in community decisions. These exist on a spectrum that runs through Muslim communities everywhere.
The Rohingya crisis reveals what happens at the extreme end of that spectrum. And because Islam demands that we engage with truth — with shuhūd, with bearing witness — this research is not just for academics. It is for every Muslim who has ever said ‘I didn’t know’ and wanted to do better.
About the series that follows
The Invisible Half is a five-article series that translates the findings of this systematic review into Islamic reflection and community action. Each article takes one theme from the research — guardianship, marriage, mental health, justice — and examines it through the lens of the Quran, the Sunnah, and classical Islamic scholarship. The goal is not to make readers feel guilty. It is to make them informed, and then moved.
She Was There. Now You Know.
The woman who gave birth last night in Cox’s Bazar — or who couldn’t reach the midwife, or who is sitting with trauma she has never been given words to describe, or whose daughter was married at fourteen because the family had no other way to survive — she was there before we knew about her. She will be there after this article is forgotten.
But knowing changes something. The Prophet ﷺ said: ‘Whoever among you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand. If he cannot, then with his tongue. If he cannot, then with his heart — and that is the weakest of faith.’ (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 49)
Reading this is the beginning of knowing. Knowing is the beginning of the heart. And the heart is where all change starts.
The articles in this series are the tongue.
What you do with them is up to you.
ABOUT THE RESEARCH
The systematic review referenced throughout this series — Experiences of Rohingya Women (2014–2025): A Systematic Literature Review Following PRISMA 2020 Guidelines — identified and synthesised 34 peer-reviewed studies from five academic databases. Studies were assessed using design-appropriate quality appraisal tools (CASP for qualitative studies, AXIS for cross-sectional studies). The review covered nine thematic areas including maternal health, reproductive health, mental health, gender-based violence, education, livelihoods, social and cultural experiences, COVID-19 impacts, and programme evaluations.