Starving to death: the latest phase of the Rohingya genocide Executive summary As Min Aung Hlaing’s regime loses control of more and more territory in Myanmar, its brutality against its own people has increased exponentially. The grim milestones keep stacking up: the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has surpassed 3.5 million, and Myanmar has the highest number of landmine victims in the world. The regime has systematically suppressed information about ‘one of the worst food crises on the planet’1 in Myanmar by detaining food security researchers and warning senior aid workers against releasing data. At the same time, this humanitarian catastrophe is one of the most severely underfunded in the world. The ongoing genocide against the Rohingya is a catastrophe within a catastrophe. The global indifference to their plight is a microcosm of the international community’s inertia towards the mass suffering of people in Myanmar as whole. More than five years have now passed since the International Court of Justice’s 2020 legally binding provisional measures order to protect the Rohingya. It’s also been three years since the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2669, which urged ‘full, safe and unhindered humanitarian access’ in Myanmar. Yet the regime continues to block life-saving humanitarian assistance for people across Myanmar, including Rohingya, without facing any consequences. In the wake of the devastating earthquake that struck Myanmar on 28 March, killing at least 3,800 people, the regime restricted international aid distribution and hoarded aid for its own use. Volunteers who worked on earthquake recovery efforts late at night were forcibly conscripted into the Myanmar military. The junta’s brutal campaign of airstrikes targeting civilian populations has continued unabated from the moment the earthquake struck, killing more than 200 civilians and making a travesty of its own ‘humanitarian ceasefire’ announced days after the disaster. At the same time, the regime continues to commission the genocidal act of deliberately inflicting ‘slow death’ conditions of life on the Rohingya group – in essence, the junta continues to deny the basic necessities of life to members of the Rohingya group in Rakhine State. Rohingya are starving to death in the latest phase of the genocide. Rohingya starving to death in central Rakhine State Almost 145,000 Rohingya have been confined to internment camps in central Rakhine State by the Myanmar military since 2012, entirely dependent on international humanitarian assistance for their survival. The regime has repeatedly refused to allow food and medicine to be delivered to 25,000 Rohingya in Pauktaw township since it lost control of the area to the Arakan Army in January 2024. So far this year, 25 Rohingya adults are reported to have died from starvation, and a further seven died due to lack of medical care for other chronic conditions. 10 Rohingya children are known to have died of diarrhoeal disease in December last year, on top of dozens more who died earlier that year. 1 Reuters, ‘Myanmar junta intimidates aid groups in effort to hide hunger crisis’ (16 December 2024) available at <https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/famine-data-myanmar/> accessed 25 May 2025; The UN’s 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan for Myanmar is currently less than 8 percent funded. UNOCHA, ‘Myanmar: Humanitarian Update No. 46’ (23 May 2025) 1. 1