Ali Johar

Founder

Founder of Rohingya Human Rights Initiative (ROHRIngya)

Ali Johar is the founder of Rohingya Human Rights Initiative (ROHRIngya)[1], an Indian non-profit working on human rights from New Delhi.

Ali Johar, also known as Maung Thein Shwe, is a Rohingya refugee rights activist based in New Delhi, India. He is Director of Education and Movement Building at the Rohingya Human Rights Initiative (ROHRIngya), a public charitable trust run by young Rohingya activists, and is described by several organisations he works with as a founding member of the group. He founded the Rohingya Literacy Programme, which helps Rohingya refugee children gain access to formal education in India.

His work covers access to education and health services for refugees, emergency relief, legal aid, the empowerment of women and young people, and the monitoring of trafficking and detention cases in India. He also acts as a media spokesperson for the organisation and writes on refugee documentation and statelessness.

Early life and education

Johar was born in Buthidaung Township in Rakhine State, Myanmar. He was ten years old when he was forced to leave Myanmar in 2005, taking refuge in Bangladesh, and he moved to Delhi in 2012.

He holds a degree in political science from the University of Delhi and a postgraduate diploma in human rights, international humanitarian law and refugee law from the Indian Society for International Law.

Career

Johar's humanitarian work began in 2013 with partners of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in India. At the Rohingya Human Rights Initiative, which was established in 2017, he has led projects on education, research and the response to Covid-19, and serves as a spokesperson for the organisation to the media.

He founded the Rohingya Literacy Programme to help Rohingya children enter formal schooling in India, working through advocacy and by facilitating school admissions. He has also worked on access to health services, emergency relief, legal aid, and programmes for women and young people, and has organised sports events intended to build relations between refugee and host communities.

Johar has served as Coordinator for Education and Youth at the Free Rohingya Coalition, and helped organise the 2018 International Convention on Rohingya Genocide in New Delhi. Since 2023 he has been an interim core group member of the Global Movement Against Statelessness. He co-wrote, with Natalie Brinham, the article 'Refugee experiences of identity documents and digitisation in India and Myanmar', published in Forced Migration Review in April 2024.

Recognition

Johar was named a Global Youth Peace Ambassador by the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development, and in 2017 received the South Asian People's Choice Youth Leader Award from the International Youth Committee. He was awarded a global fellowship by the Social Change Initiative, and was a fellow in the inaugural refugee fellows programme of Refugees International.[2][3][4][5][6][7]

Rohingya Human Rights Initiative (ROHRIngya)

Founded and run by young Rohingya activists, ROHRIngya documents human rights violations against the Rohingya and provides education, emergency relief, livelihood training and advocacy support for Rohingya refugees living in camps and settlements across India.

Rohingya Human Rights Initiative (ROHRIngya) reports the following, on its own site:

The entire important dimension of their work is the protection and development of Rohingya refugees in India. Their organization work directly with about 3000 vulnerable Rohingya in India and indirectly for the remaining.