The UN’s 30 September Rohingya Conference
Who’s not on the guest list?
On 2 July, the UN’s General Assembly President Philemon Yang circulated the provisional roster of NGOs cleared (for now) to attend September’s “High-Level Conference on Rohingya Muslims and other minorities.” Blink, and you notice what’s missing: some very vocal Rohingya-led advocacy outfits including the Burmese Rohingya Organisaton (UK) (BROUK), the European Rohingya Council (ERC) and the Free Rohingya Coalition (FRC), are nowhere to be found.
How can a meeting billed as “sustaining international attention” exclude the very actors who have sustained it for a decade? Did they miss the 30th May deadline? Or perhaps they have ECOSOC status? If an NGO already has ECOSOC consultative status it will register through a separate portal that has not opened yet, so its name would not appear in the circulated 2 July list.
BROUK, ERC and FRC, as far as I can tell, do not hold that status - so they should have used the ad-hoc (30 May) window. Their absence cannot be explained by the “ECOSOC-to-come-later” clause. So their only route in, I am led to understand, is by (a) being added belatedly by Mr Philemon Yang, or (b) being sponsored by a Member State.
A couple of other unlikely scenarios come to my mind: any member state can blue-flag an NGO during the non-objection review. Did Bangladesh object? I doubt it. Secondly, fed up with what they view as Dhaka’s “laundering” of repatriation narratives, did they decline on principle? I say that because many now read Dhaka’s conference drive as a bid to refresh donor fatigue, keep the aid pipeline open, and brand a stalled process as “progress.”
Opting out would spare these groups the optics of blessing a meeting they believe is choreographed to deliver little more than another pledge for “voluntary, safe, dignified return.” That is to say, minus the citizenship and rights that would make it remotely possible. Again, I doubt very much they declined on principle.
Who is on the list and what’s odd about it
Alsaid Foundation — United States of America
Arakan Humanitarian Organization — Turkiye
Arakan Institute for Peace and Human Rights — United States of America
Arakan Rohingya Union — United States of America
Burma Peace and Development Forum — United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Eastern Caribbean–Southeast Asia Economic and Cultural Chamber — United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Education and Development Foundation-EDUCO — Bangladesh
Henry L. Stimson Center — United States of America
Human Concern US Inc — United States of America
Independent Diplomat — United States of America
Institute of International Peace Leaders — Pakistan
International Crisis Group — United States of America
Justice For All — United States of America
Knowledge Hub Myanmar — United States of America
Los Angeles Rohingya Association — United States of America
People’s Upliftment in Livelihood and Social Empowerment (Pulse) Bangladesh Society — Bangladesh
Refugee Women for Peace and Justice — United States of America
Rohingya Advocacy & Empowerment Forum Inc — United States of America
Rohingya Centre — Canada
Rohingya Community Service of Georgia — United States of America
Rohingya National League — United States of America
Rohingya Society of Greater Houston — United States of America
Samaj Kalyan O Unnayan Shangstha — Bangladesh
Tanmeia Charity Association — Kuwait
Victim Advocates International (VAI) — Netherlands (Kingdom of the)
So what jumps out here? Well, there is a clutch of small, US-based Rohingya community outfits - from Houston to Georgia to LA. They bring grass-roots authenticity but virtually no bargaining clout. Then there’s the Arakan Rohingya Union: a deeply divisive body but well-resourced, the OIC’s sole “official” interlocutor, led by a figure whom detractors politely dub the ultimate yes-man, Mr Reza Uddin.
There are two little-known UK entities. Burma Peace and Development Forum (BPDF) stands out. Companies House shows it voluntarily dissolved itself as a limited company on 15 April 2025, only to re-emerge as a charity at the same address with the same officials. Its X/Twitter account boasts exactly two followers, and the website is still littered with Lorem Ipsum placeholders.
The organisation is headed by Mr Tahir Mohammad Khalifa - until last year he was known as Mr Tahir Mohammad Aye Tha and then he submitted a name change. Once inches away from the leadership of the Arakan Rohingya Union, Mr Tahir Mohammad Khalifa, also known as Dr Taher(!), has had difficulties with the recent leadership succession in ARU. That succession process left him on the outside looking in. That intrigue is best saved for another day.
For our purposes here, BPDF’s paper trail (recent dissolution, placeholder website, two followers on X) is hardly the kind of energetic, well-established civil society actor one might expect at a high-profile UN event. It makes you wonder if the place was earned by impact or by someone’s quiet nod behind the scenes.
The International Crisis Group’s presence is predictable, but it is controversial among Rohingya activists. The think tank’s recent “Bangladesh/Myanmar: The Dangers of a Rohingya Insurgency” (Asia Report 348, 18 June 2025) supposedly offers sober conflict analysis. Critics say it does the opposite. “Genocide” appears once, in quotes, as something “commemorated” by refugees - never as fact or crime. Terms like “ethnic cleansing” or “crimes against humanity” vanish, recasting state-engineered violence as background “deterioration.” Then there is much inflating of a bogeyman. The insurgency is deemed too weak to win, yet consumes 20 pages of alarm. That contradiction shifts the danger narrative from the perpetrators to the displaced.
I guess ICG will use the New York platform to entrench this framing, giving Bangladeshi policymakers intellectual cover to pursue security management over justice. Absent the loudest Rohingya voices, or those of their loudest advocates, that shift becomes even easier.
For a blistering “line-by-line” takedown of the ICG report, see Beyond Ah Nah’s Substack. I’ll publish my own critique shortly. Here it is:
In short, the conference doubles as Bangladesh’s fund-raising showcase and a stage-managed push to paint repatriation as just around the corner. And remember: the voices allowed to speak for the Rohingya largely dictate the story told about them. The roster will almost certainly grow once ECOSOC-accredited groups file their paperwork and latecomers slip through other accreditation channels; I’ll keep an eye on every new name that appears.