Bangladesh accused of coercing Rohingya women to use contraceptives

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WASHINGTON, D.C. June 6 (C-Fam) It is reported that Rohingya women, Muslim refugees from genocide in Myanmar, are being coerced by Bangladeshi officials to use contraceptives. The coercion is reported to be taking place in Cox’s Bazar, a port city in southeastern Bangladesh.

An article in The New Humanitarian details the allegations of widespread coercion across multiple camps.  Five Rohingya women who were interviewed said that medical staff and camp officials insisted that they be fitted with intrauterine devices (IUDs).  Four of them, who had recently given birth, were told that their newborns could not be registered unless they accepted the device.

Some staff tried to report the coercive practices to their superiors, but they were slow to respond.  The head of the Bangladeshi government’s humanitarian agency supplying aid to the refugees did not directly deny the allegations but asserted that it was not an official policy to deny birth registration or insist that Rohingya women use any particular contraceptive method.

For the Rohingya people, who had been a religious minority in majority-Buddhist Myanmar, reproductive coercion is not new.  The government of Myanmar had imposed a two-child limit on them for a decade prior to their flight to Bangladesh to escape persecution.

After their arrival in the Cox’s Bazar camps, international abortion activists like the organization Ipas worked to use the Rohingya’s plight to promote a humanitarian right to abortion. They partnered with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to train health workers in the camps to provide abortions and conducted workshops to reduce abortion stigma.

The New Humanitarian report does not contain allegations against UN agencies or their workers; it quotes a UN worker saying that the Bangladeshi authorities and local media raised complaints about the Rohingya having too many children.

UN policies insist that family planning should be voluntary.  However, the strategy launched by the Bangladeshi government in 2023 in collaboration with UNFPA and other partners “outlines an approach to increase the demand for modern contraceptive methods,” as opposed to satisfying an existing demand or ensuring greater access to methods.  The strategy refers to a reported increase in Rohingya contraceptive use as an “improvement” while noting that the “challenges that have hindered the timely provision of the full range of contraceptive and [menstrual regulation] services” are religious beliefs, disapproval by their husbands, and the desire to have children.

“Menstrual regulation” is a euphemism for abortion in Bangladesh, where the law includes a loophole where an early-term abortion procedure is legal in the absence of a pregnancy test.

While family planning advocates, including UN agencies, insist that family planning use must be voluntary, they nevertheless employ metrics that prioritize uptake and continued use of contraceptive methods and seek to remove “barriers” to use that might include women’s own moral and religious views, concerns about health effects, and even their desire to have children.

The strategy specifically emphasized the introduction of long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), such as IUDs and implants, in the refugee camps.  The New Humanitarian reports that some women forced to accept implants experienced discomfort and felt unwell afterwards.  For some Rohingya women, their desire to avoid LARCs stemmed from their Muslim faith; others had concerns that, given their unstable status as refugees, they might not be able to have them removed later if they moved to a different location.

In Cox’s Bazar, contraceptive coercion may not have been an official policy, but the strategy employed by Bangladesh and its UN colleagues to impose “demand” laid the groundwork for “supply” under duress.

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