The situation of Rohingya refugee children in Malaysia has become outrageous. They are now facing inhuman challenges as they are denied child care and other basic rights outlined in various treaties throughout history.

Rohingya – a forgotten refugee groups in Southeast Asia – do not have a chance to send their children to school due to a failure in the legal system. Out of tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees, only 18,800 were registered by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Malaysia.

They are being marginalised and many of them are also forced to endure life in vulnerable and inhumane conditions. No justice is available to them as they are considered illegal immigrants in this region and their advocates’ pleas are falling on deaf ears.

Therefore, Rohingya refugee rights activists in Malaysia have gone into possible studies and found that more than 8,000 school age children are being exploited as they are completely deprived of their basic rights to education and other needs – even though they are persons of concern to UNHCR.

At the same time, numbers of children become street children, who survive by begging on the street. No measures have been taken to alleviate poverty and eradicate illiteracy among the Rohingya refugee children.

In fact, the discussion of Rohingya refugees in South East Asia is becoming less focused on the real issue. Since the Rohinhgya refugees are not recognised as citizens under Burmese law, the Malaysian government is unable to aid their cause the way it has aided Cambodian, Filipino and Acehnese refugees before.

In late 2009, the Malaysian government announced that the Rohingya refugee children would be allowed access to public schools after 30 years of history in Malaysia. But these promises did not seem to materialise as local education authorities maintained their stance that refugees are illegal and thus not allowed access to public schools.

It is a fact that the Rohingya refugees are not being treated as other non-Rohingya Burmese refugee children – for whom volunteers from different countries are being engaged to develop programmes for education, advocacy and financial aid through the proper channels.

No one has offered support to the Rohingya refugees’ informal education centers. Instead, they have been given the unfavourable label "underground schools." This stigma of underground activism discourages Rohingya refugee teachers and educators from getting involved – even though they are working for peace, justice and equality according to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights treaties.

This is an appeal to the international community to take urgent measures to abolish ill-motivated campaigns against refugee children in Malaysia in order to improve literacy levels through access to education and provide them with the means to live under humane conditions.

We also urge UNHCR to speed up the resettlement process for Rohingya refugees in order to provide hope for these children and for the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) assistance to alleviate the suffering of this disadvantaged and marginalised minority group.

The writer is programme coordinator, Arakan Rohingya Refugee Committee (ARRC).