As part of government policy, the NGO Affairs Bureau in Dhaka has withheld FD-6 and FD-7 project approval in the Cox’s Bazar area in health, education and other sectors, even if it benefits the local Bangladeshi community. The Bangladesh government has held the registration issue as a sword over NGOs working with Rohingya, presumably to allow officials to pull the plug when they want. The government in Dhaka has refused to allow the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to register Rohingya arrivals since 1992. This means all but 30,000 of the Rohingyas are denied refugee status. The unregistered Rohingyas – more than 200,000 even before the current influx – are officially considered illegal migrants and cannot get food rations provided by the World Food Program. They are also denied access to basic healthcare and education provided by the UNHCR and its partner organizations. The government has also put a stop to the UNHCR's resettlement program, under which hundreds of Rohingyas were resettled in third countries to restart their lives. Most went to Australia, the UK and Canada. In November 2010, the Bangladesh government suspended the program, pending a review. Rohingya children in the camp are permitted to study up to seventh grade – but not beyond. Such restrictions are creating barriers for the Rohingya to access effective aid. Unless lifted, they may limit efforts by international NGOs to mobilise to aid the Rohingya refugees. Internews Media Assessment • • • • • • • There are essentially zero media outlets or ‘traditional’ mass communication platforms in the Rohingya language, or with information specifically for this group (around 1.5million people between Myanmar and Bangladesh). The most popular media outlet for Rohingya is apparently a YouTube channel called Rohingya Vision, which runs out of Malaysia – but even that is mostly in English and seems to be focused on advocacy at the moment. So people are basically relying on Facebook, YouTube, Viber and good old fashioned word-of-mouth. The news media in Bangladesh is clearly not well equipped to cover a conflict like this. On Myanmar side, there is virtually no "independent and objective" media in Rakhine. Even a more “traditional" media development program (support for local media outlets), trainings, creating new distribution channels and media-CSO relation stuff will be hugely beneficial. There’s potentially a very important ‘anti-radicalization’ angle. At the moment the limited amount of Rohingya language information circulating is heavily politicized and potentially influenced by extremist elements. The assessment mission saw plenty of bullet-riddled bodies and corpses of drowned people on the Naf River. Part of the problem has been lack of documentation on the Myanmar side. The fake photos and videos are inflaming tensions, but also actually distracting from what is a serious humanitarian crisis.