Unknown Nations carries Gospel to stateless Rohingya
By Anna Deckert July 17, 2025
Myanmar (MNN) – The Rohingya continue to be persecuted and forcibly deported back to Myanmar. As they live in daily limbo, Unknown Nations offers them the hope of Christ .
A People with No Place
The Rohingya are the largest stateless people group worldwide. They primarily hail from the Rakhine state in Myanmar. However, their home country refuses them citizenship. The government persecutes the primarily Muslim group to the point of UN-recognized genocide.
There are more than 2.6 million internally displaced Rohingya in Myanmar and almost a million people have fled into neighboring Bangladesh, creating some of the largest refugee camps in the world.
These refugee camps mainly exist in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar region. Greg Kelley with Unknown Nations says, “You’ll drive for maybe 30 miles and see different camps. It’s not one big camp. It’s literally dozens of camps that might have 50,000 people, 70,000 people, 12,000 people, and they’re designated to a camp. They have a tent. It’s horrible conditions. And like I said, they’re living like animals. The sewage, the sanitation – you wouldn’t want an animal living in there.”
Needing Eternal Hope
In the past Myanmar has restricted access into the country as well as out, meaning most of these people have never heard about Christ. Almost all of these refugees are Muslim.
“When it’s all said and done, they remain largely without a Gospel witness,” Kelley explains. “So as they’re being persecuted from all fronts, they still don’t know Jesus.”
Unknown Nations follows Christ’s command to spread the Good News by heading into these refugee camps. They are sending in indigenous leaders to love people, share food and resources, as well as share the Gospel. However, the need among the Rohingya is great.
Not Just Countries, But People Groups
Kelley exhorts Christians to stretch their boundaries of what God has called them to. “I think that when the Lord called us to go make disciples of all nations, I think the body of Christ needs to get to get a hold of that word and understand we’re not called to countries. We’re not called to India. We’re not called to Myanmar. We’re not called to Bangladesh. We’re called to the nations or people groups inside of them, like the Rohingya.”
This means making changes.
“We have to begin going into the deeper waters and the Rohingya are the deeper waters of missions, which are going to require a different strategy. So doing things the same way we’ve always done them will never reach the Rohingya. So that’s a big question, and there’s a lot of ways to address it, but it ultimately comes down to our drive and determination to take serious Jesus’s last words, to make disciples of all nations.”
If you’d like to join Unknown Nations to help bring the Gospel to the Rohingya and other unreached people groups, click here.
Image courtesy of English: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, OGL v1.0OGL v1.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://www.mnnonline.org/news/unknown-nations-carries-gospel-to-stateless-rohingya/