Bangladesh–Myanmar border

Across the Naf

On 25 August 2017, after attacks by a militant group on Myanmar security forces, a brutal military crackdown began in Rakhine State, and more than 700,000 Rohingya, a mainly Muslim minority, fled to Bangladesh. They joined others who had fled earlier waves of violence in camps just across the border in Cox’s Bazar district.^[2]

Unable to pay for boats, many built rafts from bamboo poles and empty jerrycans and paddled for about four hours across the Naf estuary, some three kilometres wide, to Shahporir Dwip. More than 100 people drowned in the first months, and by November 2017 the Kutupalong Extension camp alone sheltered some 335,000 new arrivals.^[1]

After the 2021 coup, fighting between Myanmar’s military and the Arakan Army in Rakhine drove more Rohingya to flee, and by 2025 Bangladesh was hosting more than a million refugees from Myanmar.^[2]

“Unable to pay for the crossing, refugees are building rafts from whatever material they can get their hands on”^[1]

At sea

In 2009 both countries accepted the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea over their maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal. After hearings in September 2011, the tribunal gave its judgment on 14 March 2012.^[3]