Md Jamal’s parents fled to Bangladesh in 

1992 along with 250,000 Rohingya. He was born a refugee in 1995 in the Kutupalong camp. He started taking pictures and using social media in his early 20’s. One day, an international journalist reached out and paid him for the rights to use one of his photographs for an article; with the money he bought a second-hand camera-phone and from that moment, his photographic career began. 

 

In October 2016, he started to document the first Rohingya arriving in Bangladesh fleeing the crisis in Rakhine. By August 2017, when the main Rohingya exodus took place, he was already collaborating with various international media outlets such The Guardian, Reuters, Paris Match, Al Jazeera, Frontier Myanmar, Peoples Dispatch, BBC News Bangla, Tempo English, CNN and others. In 2020, one of his photographs became the front cover for the exhibition organised by the Oxford Human Rights Festival: Next Generation - Young Rohingya Refugees. ‘My driving force is to ask people everywhere: Why do we face such persecution? Why has the world allowed such injustice against us?’ —explained Md Jamal.