Days after an attempt to begin the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya in Bangladesh stalled, the future of the world’s most persecuted minority looks more uncertain than ever and concerns are growing that it will be years before they can return safely to Myanmar, if ever.

Efforts by the Myanmar and Bangladesh government last week to begin the repatriation of the more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees living in camps in Cox’s Bazar fell apart after not a single Rohingya agreed to go back to Myanmar, leaving one of the world’s biggest refugee crises in a further state of limbo.

The key obstacle for repatriation is that while most refugees are desperate to return home, the conditions in Rahkine state remain as dangerous and volatile as before the military crackdown in August 2017 which saw tens of thousands killed, women raped and villages razed, triggering a mass exodus.

‘Myanmar don’t want the Rohingya’

The Myanmar government declared last week it was ready to take back the Rohingya, and had built camps and reception centres to welcome them in batches of 150 per day. However there were no guarantees of safety, citizenship and freedom of movement that the Rohingya and international community consider essential for repatriation to begin.

“I do not believe that Myanmar wants to take back the Rohingya,” Yanghee Lee, UN special rapporteur for Myanmar, told the Guardian on Wednesday.

Myanmar itself has stated that returning Rohingya would not be allowed to move beyond the Maungdaw Township area in Rahkine, one of the three areas they fled.

“Talk of repatriation is very unrealistic right now and even more it is very dangerous,” Lee said. “Myanmar has not shown any real willingness to take back the Rohingya and despite all their talk about taking them back, that’s all it was, talk. They went though all that trouble driving them out and nothing has changed.”

The volatile conditions in Rahkine may prove to be an unsurmountable stumbling block to sending the refugees back in the near future – one human rights groups and NGOs fear could be exploited by the Myanmar authorities to ensure the Rohingya remain in the Cox’s Bazar camps for years to come, if not permanently.

Myanmar has no intention of taking them all back or reinstating their citizenship Mark Farmaner

Lee said even with reconciliation efforts it would be “years and years” before it was safe for the Rohingya to return because of “decades of discrimination against the Rohingya by law, by practice and by policy” that has entrenched anti-muslim sentiment in Rahkine. The situation remains so bad that Muslims in Rahkine are still fleeing to Bangladesh – 14,000 have crossed the border since January and the head of the UN fact-finding mission to Myanmar recently said that “genocide is still ongoing”.

Lee’s pessimism was echoed by Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, who told the Guardian that Myanmar’s public show of being ready for repatriation was a “charade” to ease international pressure, which has mounted since the UN fact-finding mission that concluded ethnic cleansing occurred in Rahkine state and the Myanmar military generals should be investigated for genocide by the international criminal court (ICC).

“Of course Myanmar has no intention of taking them all back or reinstating their citizenship,” said Farmaner. “You can clearly see that they’ve only built camps to house around 30,000 Rohingya, the amount of refugees they consider to be a small price to pay to take back to get the international community off their back – but they certainly don’t want any more than that.”

Farmaner said the promised pledge by Myanmar to bring back 150 Rohingya a day would mean repatriation of the million refugees in the camps, some who arrived before 2017 in previous outbreaks of violence, would take almost twenty years.

‘Permanent apartheid-like arrangements’

Myanmar promises a pathway for Rohingya to citizenship, which was stripped away in 1982. However this will only be once the refugees have signed up for a National Verification Card (NVC), which most refugees are resistant to as it means an acceptance they are “foreign Bengalis” rather than rightful Myanmar citizens. Maungdaw district administrator U Soe Aung told magazine Frontier Myanmar this week that it would be “impossible” for all Rohingya to get citizenship.

“It appears Myanmar is preparing permanent apartheid-like arrangements for the Rohingya, and any returnees from Bangladesh will just be funnelled into this system,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh is not prepared to accept that the one million Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar are staying put, and Bangladesh refugee commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam told the Guardian that repatriation “will definitely happen”. While Bangladesh has reiterated its promise not to force any Rohingya back over the border, multiple NGOs on the ground have privately expressed concern that the Bangladesh authorities might try and start restricting aid and NGO visas to Cox’s Bazar or spread misinformation to the refugees to persuade them to return.

The insistence the Rohingya’s presence is only temporary has meant Bangladesh is reluctant to allow more permanent infrastructure in Cox’s Bazar camps such as schools for the hundreds of thousand of children. Caroline Gluck, spokesperson for UNHCR, said the longer they remained in the camps, the greater the risk of extremism, particularly among young men deprived of the ability to work.

Bangladesh is still pushing forward with a plan to relocate refugees to a new camp on a silt river island, Bhasan Char, a proposal that has caused concern at Human Rights Watch and aid agencies because it is at high risk of floods. Kalam said any relocation to Bhasan Char would only happen “once the election is over”.