At Rohingya refugee camps, most birthdays fall on New Year's Day

Some feel robbed of their identity due to arbitrary UN refugee documentation

- Verena Holzl

Rohingya refugees walking in a market at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh's Ukhia on Dec 18, 2025. Some 67 per cent of the Rohingya living in refugee camps are registered as being born on Jan 1, with many of them given the arbitrary birth date to fit them into the UN's refugee system. PHOTO: AFP

(AFP)

When he woke up in his bamboo shelter on New Year’s Day, hundreds of Facebook notifications were awaiting Mr Mohammed Faruque on his phone.

It was his birthday. It was his wife's birthday, too. And that of his five brothers and sisters, his parents, and his best friend Mohammad Ullah. And most fellow residents of Camp 7. He had already posted his best wishes the night before, apologising tongue-in-cheek that he would not be able to congratulate them all.

According to their United Nations refugee cards, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people in this and more than 30 other camps in Bangladesh were all born on the same day, Jan 1.

Not really, though. When members of the ethnic minority were violently driven from their homes in neighbouring Myanmar in 2017, the overwhelmed UN aid workers put that date on the paperwork used to register them.

The shared, arbitrary birthday leads to annual rounds of humour on social media.

“We need a cake that can cover an area of around one kilometre,” one refugee posted this year.

But the jokes are bittersweet.