Bangladesh is not a state party to the 1951 Convention or its 1967 Protocol and does not have national legislation or policy framework on asylum including granting of asylum on a prima facie basis. However, despite not having domestic legislation on asylum, Bangladesh has granted prima facie refugee status to the Rohingyas from Myanmar during certain influxes based on executive decisions rather than formal asylum procedures. But in the latest influx of 2017, the government did not grant them refugee status, rather termed them as Forcefully Displaced Myanmar Nationals (FDMN). 

Rohingyas who arrived in the 1990s and members of their families are the only profile the Government of Bangladesh considers as “refugees” following joint registration by the Government of Bangladesh and UNHCR, and an RSD-like process conducted in 1998/99 known as the Individual Family Questionnaire (IFQ). The Rohingyas who arrived in Bangladesh in subsequent influxes were not registered by the Government of Bangladesh until the latest influx of August 2017.  Those previously unregistered and those who arrived in the influx of August 2017 were registered, in a joint registration exercise under the provisions of the 2018 UNHCR-Government of Bangladesh Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the Exchange of Personal Data of Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals/Refugees. The Government of Bangladesh identifies this group as Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals (FDMN) while UNHCR identifies them (like those who arrived previously) as refugees. 

With assistance from the UNHCR, the Department of Immigration and Passports of the Government of Bangladesh initiated registration using biometrics1 for Rohingya refugees in 2017.2 But the "executive order" of the Bangladeshi government does not even recognize the refugees as a distinct class deserving of preferential treatment; instead, they establish disparate standards of treatment for the refugees.14  
 

• 1

  In this biometrics exercise- iris scan, 10 fingerprints, and photographs of the refugees/FDMN are enrolled in the system. 

• 2

  Humanitarian Response Plan 2017, p 11Available at: https://reliefweb.int/report/bangladesh/bangladesh-humanitarian-response-plan-september-2017-february-2018-rohingya;  Bayes Ahmed, ’ Are Rohingyas protected in countries that did not sign the 1951 refugee convention?’, Risk and Disaster Reduction Blog, UCL (5 October 2021), available at: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/irdr/2021/10/05/rohingya/