New Research Reveals the Lasting Impact of Genocide on Rohingya Children 

LAW NEWS RELEASE

5 December 2025

New Research Reveals the Lasting Impact of Genocide on Rohingya Children 

Geneva (LAW) — For many Rohingya children, their earliest memories are of death. Over 70% of research participants in a groundbreaking new report, all children at the time of the 2017 genocide in Myanmar, directly witnessed the violent killing of other children. Today, Legal Action Worldwide (LAW) releases shocking research exposing the systematic targeting of Rohingya children during the Myanmar military’s 2017 genocidal “clearance operations” and the profound, long-term effects they continue to endure. 

LAW’s research reveals a devastating truth long overlooked: the genocide not only aimed to destroy the Rohingya people, but it also aimed to erase their future by targeting their children. The accounts are harrowing. A nine-year-old boy raised his arm to block a blow aimed at his neck and the blade cut his hand instead. An eight-year-old girl still carries the scar of a rifle smashed against her forehead. A sixteen-year-old girl was abducted, detained for a week, and shot while escaping. Village after village, survivors described infants thrown into fires or rivers, stabbed, or trampled to death.  

“I was raped. I was injured… My sister was raped at the same time, and her husband was killed trying to save her. He was beheaded… My mother was beaten on her head and body and later lost most of her eyesight… I still remember seeing other women being raped and killed…”, recounted a survivor, a teenager at the time. 

Her horrific story is far from being an isolated incident. Of the 40 participants interviewed in this research (18 males, 18 females, 4 hijra/transgender people), now aged 13-25, nearly 60% witnessed parents, siblings, or neighbours being murdered before their eyes. Over 40% directly witnessed the killing of at least one immediate family member. Nearly all saw corpses scattered along their escape routes, through the jungles and beaches leading to Bangladesh. 

As noted by the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor, children “embody the future of the targeted group”, making them frequent objects of genocidal intent. LAW’s findings show how deliberately the Myanmar military acted on this intent. The study reveals a pattern of psychological harm rarely documented in other conflict settings. Children described chronic fear and intrusive memories; emotional withdrawal and developmental delays; an inability to trust adults or form relationships; fractured identities and a loss of safety within the family unit. And these effects are not simply the result of displacement. Children born later in refugee camps do not show the same severe trauma indicators. The harm traces directly back to the violence of 2017.

A 15-year-old boy who lost his parents said: “When I think about my family, I go to a corner and stay alone. I separate myself from other people.” A young hijra survivor, tortured and sexually assaulted, added: “The most painful is my father’s disappearance. We never knew what happened to him.” 

International justice efforts have historically sidelined crimes committed specifically against children, treating them as secondary victims rather than deliberate targets. As a result, the systematic assault on Rohingya children remains under-recognized and under-prosecuted. Crimes against Rohingya children and their lasting impact are central to the genocidal campaign. LAW calls for greater training for investigators, lawyers and judges on child-sensitive approaches, and more protection for child witnesses. 

“The brutality of the Myanmar military’s deliberate and targeted crimes against Rohingya children is sickening”, notes Antonia Mulvey, LAW’s executive director. “The genocide did not end in 2017. Its impact lives on the bodies and minds of the children who survived. As the Junta is expected to hold sham elections later this month, we must denounce their past and current crimes against their own people. Justice is long overdue.” 

ENDS 

About Legal Action Worldwide (LAW) 

LAW is an independent global organization that provides innovative legal assistance to survivors of human rights violations and advocates for accountability in some of the world’s most challenging contexts

For more information, please contact: 

Lucien Christen, Communications Advisor, christen@legalactionworldwide.org

Hannah Copeland, Communications Coordinator, [email protected] 

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