Rahima Kushi: From a Rohingya Refugee Camp to Advocacy in Canada and the ICJ Rahima Kushi, a Rohingya advocate and political science student at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, recounts being born and raised in a refugee camp in Bangladesh after her parents fled Myanmar in 1992 and growing up without citizenship, security, or access to formal education. She describes early involvement in community programs and, after the 2017 genocide in Myanmar that forced over a million people to flee to Bangladesh, working as an interpreter in a surgical field hospital and as a psychosocial assistant supporting traumatized survivors, including witnessing a pregnant woman in severe pain with nowhere safe to give birth.
In 2019, after speaking to the Associated Press about Rohingya children’s education barriers, she says she was suspended from university for being Rohingya and then faced online harassment, threats of sexual violence, and pressure to hide her identity, yet continued working, including as a language research officer with Translators Without Borders during COVID. Her case was referred to UNHCR and she was resettled to Canada with her family in December 2023 through the Government Assisted Refugee program, and she now advocates through Awaaz For Refugees and other initiatives for education access, protection from marginalization and exploitation, and support for refugee women facing trauma and gender-based violence. She explains the emotional weight of advocacy in exile, including survivor’s guilt, and highlights her involvement in The Gambia’s case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice, where she helped collect documentation and testimony, attended hearings in The Hague, and served as the only interpreter for the final hearing while bringing a witness from Canada.
She also addresses misconceptions that portray Rohingya women only as victims or suggest families do not value women’s education, emphasizing the context of targeted sexual violence and insecurity and noting Rohingya women’s roles as educators, advocates, researchers, and organizers. Despite threats from Myanmar-linked actors and being targeted in Bangladesh, she outlines goals to continue her education, contribute to humanitarian advocacy and policy, help bring more Rohingya women to Canada for university, and ultimately support the Rohingya hope of returning to their homeland in Rakhine, Myanmar.