Challenges of Rohingya Refugee Women in Japan

抄録

This paper analyzes the challenges faced by resettled Rohingya refugee women in Tatebayashi, Gunma prefecture in Japan through participatory observation research and offers insights on the issue for Japan more broadly. It is, moreover, intended to contribute to discourse on the subject of refugees and aid in advocacy efforts aimed at improving the living standards of refugee womenfolk through education, social assistance, and social integration. The Rohingya are a group of people indigenous to the Rakhine state of Myanmar and have become especially well-known since they began to flee institutionalized persecution and constitutionalized denationalization under successive administration specifically since the military coup in 1962. These atrocities have long amounted to a crime against humanity and state-sponsored genocide that has rendered the Rohingya population stateless and displaced domestically, regionally, and globally. Rohingya people are now globally recognized as the most persecuted people with one-fourth of its total population residing in the world's largest makeshift refugee camp in Bangladesh. Today, there are approximately two-hundred Rohingya living in Japan, and about ninety percent of them live in Gunma. As a Rohingya refugee myself, I was able to settle to Japan, obtain my undergraduate degree from Aoyama Gakuin University, and commit myself to voluntary community service with the hope of improving the living standards of my fellow Rohingya womenfolk. My years of engagement and participation in the Tatebayashi Rohingya community indicate persistent challenges for Rohingya refugee women, particularly a lack of domestic support, skills development opportunities and empowerment. In this paper, I advocate for accessible quality education, sufficient financial support and local integration through job placement and community service to overcome these challenges and optimize education, social assistance, and social integration for Rohingya refugee women in Japan.