The Rohingya people, already recognized as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, now confront a devastating new threat in Arakan State. Reports confirm that the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic armed group that has seized control over large swathes of Rakhine State, is systematically forcibly recruiting Rohingya Muslim women and girls including minors under 18 years old and deploying them to combat zones. This practice represents not an isolated incident but a pattern of abuse that has drawn urgent condemnation from human rights organizations and demands immediate international intervention.
A Systematic Campaign of Coercion
The forced recruitment campaign has intensified across multiple Rohingya-populated areas, including Maungdaw, Buthidaung, Rathedaung, Minbya, and Thandwe. According to local sources, the Arakan Army has been pressuring every Rohingya family to provide one member for military service. In households lacking adult men a common circumstance given the decades of persecution, displacement, and loss of life women and girls are being compelled to serve in their place.
Recent incidents illustrate the brutality of this campaign. On February 18, 2026, armed AA members entered Wara Kyun village in Buthidaung Township and forcibly abducted three Rohingya girls, including a young woman named Minara who had been married just two days earlier. Local residents report the victims were taken to an AA camp in Kintaung village, where they are believed to be undergoing military training. According to one local source, the recruits are reportedly required to wear shorts during training and have been subjected to treatment described as humiliating and uncomfortable, with unconfirmed rumors circulating that some girls may be facing sexual abuse.
The human cost of this campaign is already evident. In another tragic incident on February 14, 2026, a teenage Rohingya girl named Khushmida died after falling from a moving vehicle while attempting to escape forced conscription in Maungdaw Township. AA members had surrounded her village as part of what villagers described as an operation to recruit young women for military training.
Khushmida had been hidden in various houses for days to evade the recruitment drive, but was found when she returned home and subsequently taken away. Her desperate attempt to escape resulted in her death.
Families report that many are now hiding their daughters or moving them between villages to avoid conscription. One resident told investigators: “We do not know how long we can protect our daughters” . The poorest families face the greatest pressure, as those with financial means appear able to buy exemptions to some extent, creating a system where economic vulnerability translates directly into increased risk of forced military service.
Beyond Recruitment: A Broader Pattern of Atrocities
The forced recruitment of Rohingya women and girls must be understood within a broader context of systematic abuses committed by the Arakan Army against Rohingya civilians. The AA has long cultivated an image of being a disciplined revolutionary force, leading some international observers to view it as a potential partner for peace. However, recent evidence has shattered this illusion.
A comprehensive 56-page report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented how the AA massacred hundreds of Rohingya civilians in Hoyyar Siri (also known as Htan Shauk Khan) village in May 2024. According to survivor accounts, AA fighters deliberately targeted unarmed Rohingya civilians attempting to flee, opening fire on villagers even as some waved white flags. One witness recounted seeing his son, wife, and two daughters shot sequentially as they attempted to turn back. Fighters gathered villagers in a paddy field near a mosque and opened fire randomly, approaching wounded individuals to shoot them again at close range to ensure they were dead. The massacre also involved abductions, with survivors alleging that fighters robbed them of cash and jewelry, abducted Rohingya women and girls, and subjected detainees to beatings and torture, including the use of electric shocks.
HRW compiled a list of over 170 villagers including approximately 90 children who were killed or remain missing, though researchers note the actual death toll is likely much higher. Satellite imagery corroborated witness testimony that AA fighters set fire to Hoyyar Siri, destroying the entire settlement after seizing control.
The patterns of abuse documented by HRW align with findings from the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK), which has identified escalating sexual violence against Rohingya women and girls under AA control. According to a May 2026 briefing, sexual violence against Rohingya women and girls is “becoming increasingly embedded within systems of detention, coercion and control under Arakan Army authority”. The report documents rape, gang rape, and threats of sexual violence during recruitment raids and incommunicado confinement.
In the aftermath of the Hoyyar Siri massacre, survivors were forcibly relocated to a makeshift camp where they continue to be denied freedom of movement, subjected to forced labor, and deprived of adequate food and medical care. Some survivors were coerced into providing false video testimony exonerating the AA during a controlled media visit.
A Crisis Within a Crisis
The Rohingya have endured systematic persecution for decades. Following violent military crackdowns in 2017, over 700,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh. As of August 2026, Myanmar has verified nearly 309,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh as former residents of Rakhine State, but the military-backed government insists repatriation cannot proceed until security conditions improve. However, the AA’s actions demonstrate that Rohingya remain unsafe even in areas no longer controlled by the Myanmar military.
The AA has also imposed severe restrictions on Rohingya communities under its control. In Maungdaw Township, residents report curfews enforced with a shoot-on-sight policy. The AA has banned Rohingya from importing goods from Bangladesh or traveling there for medical treatment, threatening to shoot at any boat crossing the Naf River. Virtually every item of property owned by Rohingya is taxed homes, shops, boats, fishing nets, cattle, and rice paddies and the AA has demanded extremely high taxes from households using antennae to access Bangladeshi mobile signals.
Local sources report that AA soldiers surround Rohingya villages and order residents out of their homes for “investigative operations” that can involve as many as 200 soldiers. Villagers are corralled in one place for the entire day without food or water while soldiers conduct house-to-house searches. During these operations, AA soldiers have been reported to be verbally and physically abusive, slapping and kicking Rohingya villagers and calling them derogatory names such as “kalar” and “terrorists”.
BROUK has documented the AA’s arbitrary arrest and detention of 149 Rohingya men and youth in 25 separate incidents across Buthidaung, Maungdaw, Pauktaw, and Kyauktaw townships. Many were arrested on false allegations of supporting armed groups, but most were detained while simply trying to earn a living or feed their families. In one case, 50 farmers working in their rice fields were detained for a month, beaten, verbally abused, and deprived of adequate food.
International Legal Violations and Accountability Failures
The forced conscription of civilians, particularly women and children, violates multiple international legal instruments, including the Geneva Conventions, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and customary international humanitarian law. The recruitment and use of children in armed conflict constitutes a war crime.
The AA’s actions also violate the principle of distinction a fundamental rule of international humanitarian law requiring parties to conflict to distinguish between civilians and combatants and the prohibition against using civilians as human shields.
Despite these grave violations, accountability remains elusive. The UN’s Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar is investigating allegations of serious violations by various parties to the conflict, including night raids, mass arrests, killings, restrictions on access to medical and humanitarian assistance, sexual violence, executions, recruitment and use of children, and the destruction of mosques. The mechanism says it has collected evidence from more than 1,600 sources.
However, nearly nine years after the Rohingya genocide, perpetrators of mass atrocities still have not been held accountable. BROUK has warned that accountability cannot be selective and must apply regardless of whether violations are committed by the Burmese military or the Arakan Army .
Implications for Repatriation and Regional Stability
The AA’s abuses have profound implications for ongoing repatriation efforts. Bangladesh has hosted over one million Rohingya refugees for nearly a decade, facing mounting social, economic, and environmental pressures. While repatriation remains the most sustainable solution, refugees cannot return to places where they face violence, persecution, or renewed displacement.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) has noted that the AA cannot be seen as a credible repatriation partner while it continues to perpetrate abuses with impunity. Any repatriation mechanism must include strong guarantees of protection and accountability, including third-party verification.
Moreover, the AA’s actions are increasingly affecting Bangladesh directly. Since the group took control of large parts of the Myanmar side of the border, hundreds of Bangladeshi fishermen have reportedly been detained or abducted from the Naf River and adjacent maritime areas, with many still in AA custody.
What Must Be Done
The international community and human rights organizations must take immediate and effective action:
1. Issue Urgent Public Condemnations: The AA’s forced recruitment campaign and other abuses must be unequivocally condemned at the highest levels.
2. Impose Targeted Sanctions: Coordinated sanctions and other targeted measures should be imposed against AA leadership and those responsible for serious human rights abuses.
3. Demand Immediate Cease: The AA must immediately cease all forced recruitment, release those already conscripted, and end attacks on civilians.
4. Ensure Humanitarian Access: Humanitarian access must be prioritized in AA-controlled areas, and international monitors should be deployed where feasible.
5. Document and Preserve Evidence: Support for Rohingya-led organisations documenting human rights abuses must be increased to build cases for future accountability.
6. Strengthen International Accountability: Support must be provided for ICJ proceedings, ICC pathways, and universal jurisdiction cases covering crimes committed by both the Burmese military and the AA.
7. Protect Those Fleeing: Bangladesh must be engaged to ensure border protection for those fleeing forced recruitment while upholding the principle of non-refoulement.
8. Reject Selective Justice: Accountability efforts must address abuses by all parties to the conflict, regardless of their identity. BROUK has urged the Argentine court investigating the Rohingya genocide to include atrocities committed by the AA within the scope of accountability efforts.
9. Reassess Repatriation: Any repatriation mechanisms must include strong guarantees of protection, including third-party verification, before refugees are returned.
Conclusion
The forced recruitment of Rohingya women and girls by the Arakan Army, combined with documented massacres, arbitrary detention, sexual violence, extortion, and restrictions on basic freedoms, represents a devastating chapter in the Rohingya crisis. The AA has proven itself no partner for peace, but rather an actor repeating the junta’s crimes against a population that has already suffered genocide, displacement, and statelessness.
The international community’s failure to act decisively has enabled this pattern of persecution to continue and escalate. Every day of inaction puts more Rohingya lives at risk. The world must not look away while a vulnerable population is systematically forced to the frontlines to die in a war not of their making. As BROUK’s President Tun Khin stated: “The genocide against the Rohingya did not end in 2017. The international community failed to dismantle the system that enabled genocide against the Rohingya. Today, those same structures are being reproduced under new authorities. This should deeply alarm the international community”.
Immediate action is not just a moral imperative it is a legal obligation. The protection of civilians, particularly women and children, is a fundamental principle of international humanitarian law that must be upheld without exception. The Rohingya have endured unspeakable horrors for generations, and they must not now be sacrificed as cannon fodder in Myanmar’s civil war.