Kathijah is a 16-year-old Rohingya refugee who has been sent by her parents to Malaysia with her older brother, Ishak, after life in their village in Rakhine State, Myanmar, became unsafe.

They are travelling on foot in the forest along the Thai-Malaysian border when they encounter a raid and are separated.

Kathijah tries to message and call Ishak but her phone runs out of battery. She is afraid because she is now alone.

This is the start of a fictional story told through ‘Finding Home’, a new smartphone application that enables users to experience a refugee’s personal journey of coming to and surviving in Malaysia.

“The story of every refugee is here, in their phones.

“For refugees, smartphones are essential tools for survival. That’s how they find shelter, connect with one another, find food.

“We wanted to tell the story of refugees through (their) phone… to help people understand what refugees go through,” said Graham Drew of Grey Malaysia at the launch of the application at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) centre in Kuala Lumpur today.

Grey Malaysia, an advertising firm, developed ‘Finding Home’ along with games company Kaigan Games for UNHCR Malaysia.

When launched on the user’s smartphone, the application ‘takes over’ the phone, transforming it to Kathijah’s personal mobile phone complete with messages, phone calls, photographs and videos that users can watch and interact with.

“By using the familiar functions of a smartphone as a storytelling device, the experience becomes uniquely personal, making a very important story accessible to a whole new audience,” added Drew (on left in photo).

Though fictional, Kathijah’s story, along with the characters she communicates with, were constructed through interviews and focus groups done with Rohingya refugees living in Malaysia, across a span of four months.

A UNHCR application is also embedded within the experience, offering users more information on the refugee situation in Malaysia, as well as options to donate and volunteer.

More than 150,000 refugees in Malaysia

There are more than 150,000 registered refugees in Malaysia, UNHCR representative Richard Towle said at the launch.

“We often see those people as just statistics and sometimes those numbers make us feel completely disempowered,

“Behind every (one of the) 150,000 is a story, a personal human narrative,” Towle said.

Of the number, 57,619 are ethnic Rohingya.

Many refugees, especially those without UN documents, face arrest and detention because Malaysian law makes no distinction between refugees and undocumented migrants.

In May 2015, more than two dozen mass graves of Rohingya people, believed to be victims of human trafficking, were discovered along the Thai-Malaysian border in Wang Kelian, Perlis.

The police investigation into the graves, that resulted in the conviction of four foreigners and the release of 12 local policemen allegedly involved, raised questions among human rights groups.

Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi announced last month that Malaysia, along with Qatar, will be channelling US$50 million (RM218.36 million) to help the plight of the Rohingya.

Some 10,000 people, including Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, attended a solidarity gathering in Kuala Lumpur last year to protest against state-sanctioned violence against the Rohingya community in Myanmar.

Najib also hosted a meeting of representatives from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) earlier this year, urging Myanmar to stop attacking and discriminating against the Rohingya minority.

Malaysia has not ratified UNHCR's 1951 Refugee Convention and does not have a system in place for refugees to seek asylum.