Rohingya children from Myanmar born in Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh start life in a legal limbo, not considered Bangladeshi or Burmese by birth. With neither country taking responsibility for the Rohingya, the newborn Chowdhury encountered is one of 60 children born stateless each day in the refugee camp.

For decades the Rohingya ethnic group have been persecuted and denied citizenship by neighboring Myanmar, which considers them foreigners, but where they say they’ve lived since the fifteenth century. In 1982, Myanmar passed a law that barred the Rohingya from a list of 135 official ethnic groups, denying them citizenship at birth. The Rohingya were forced to trade their citizenship cards from Myanmar for a temporary registration card,