Three years ago, over 700,000 Rohingya, including almost half a million children, fled their homes in Myanmar to Bangladesh , leaving everything behind in a bid to escape horrific violence and human rights abuses in Rakhine state. Today marks their third year of forced exile. Since 2017, more than 75,000 babies have been born in the camps of Cox’s Bazar, where they will have taken their first steps and spoken their first words. All they have learned about Myanmar – their home – will be second-hand, from the stories told to them by their parents. For these children, the sprawling camps of Cox’s Bazaar are the only life they have ever known. But this is only half the story. On the other side of the border too, in Myanmar, over 30,000 children (mostly Rohingya and some Kaman) have been born across 21 camps since 2012, when these communities were internally displaced by conflict and abuse. The conditions in which more than 100,000 children now live are a symptom of our collective failure as an international community to protect these children and guarantee their futures in a place they can finally call home. For Rohingya children to return home, the root causes of their displacement must be addressed. Myanmar should act to immediately address the discrimination, violence and abuse that Rohingya face in Rakhine state and ensure they have equal access to rights including citizenship, freedom of movement and access to essential services. The international community too must continue to fund the humanitarian efforts in Cox’s Bazar and Rakhine state. It is futile to talk about a positive future for Rohingya children if they are not provided with access to education, including up to the university level, health care and other tools necessary to look after their well-being. For any solution to this crisis to be sustainable, we must move to look after Rohingya children’s futures, by looking after their present. We will have failed Rohingya children yet again, if in a year’s time we are back here marking the fourth anniversary of their exile. The current status quo is not acceptable nor sustainable. World leaders – particularly those with close ties to Myanmar – must do everything they can to encourage a swift resolution to this crisis. We can’t allow the years to pile up and for children to spend their entire childhoods in confinement. Onno Van Manen, country director in Bangladesh, Save the Children