Police guard the Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp. (Turjoy Chowdhury for The Washington Post)
Last weekend, a fire ripped through a stretch of one the world’s largest and most cramped refugee camps. Though no deaths were reported, theblaze incinerated more than 2,000 shelters and left more than 12,000 Rohingya people homeless, half of whom are children, according to local Bangladeshi officials. It was just the latest misery to befall a community already coping with years of dispossession, deprivation and statelessness.
The UN has recently cut food aid to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Observers fear that this will lead to severe health problems and increased crime. They say refugees must be allowed to work.
There are about 1 million members of the primarily Muslim Rohingya community living in squalid refugee camps in Cox's Bazar on the southeastern coast of Bangladesh.
A child is seen near the Balukhali refugee camp after the fire on March 5 (Supplied)
Thousands have been rendered homeless and about 20 children have gone missing after a fire broke out on March 5 at a refugee camp on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. The fire started on the afternoon of March 5 in Ward 11 of the Balukhali refugee camp, located in Ukhiya Upazila, Cox’s Bazar District, Bangladesh. It lasted for two hours and resulted in injuries to 50 residents of the camp, according to local sources. The Balukhali refugee camp was originally made up of around 8,000 shelters housing refugees from northern Rakhine State.
Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mohammed Mizanur Rahman talked about the Rohingya crisis in a recent interview with Dhaka Tribune ’s Ali Asif Shawon
Rohingyas walk on a road at a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on Wednesday, August 11, 2021 Allison Joyce/Dhaka Tribune
What is the impact of the recent Rohingya aid fund cut?
Now Rohingya people will sell their cheap labor in our market and our Bangladeshi day laborers will lose their job options. It will have a chain reaction which will have the cohesion build-up process between the host and guest community decline. Social tension will arise. Why is the humanitarian fund for Rohingya declining?
Humanitarian funds basically depend on emotion. After a certain time emotion varies. In 2017, the UN declared the Rohingya crisis a level-3 crisis, which means the topmost emergency. For example, after the earthquake, Turkey is now at level-3. Right now, the Rohingya issue is at level-2, which means a non-emergency crisis. By this time, several disasters have happened worldwide. This is why the focus has been shifted to different areas.
The prime minister sheds light on the Myanmar refugee crisis in an interview in Qatar
Sheikh Hasina has highlighted the conflicts among the Myanmar Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh, reiterating her concerns over regional security.
The prime minister shed light on the crisis in an interview with Al Jazeera during her visit to Qatar to attend the Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries in Doha, state news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha reported on Wednesday.
The UN and the Bangladesh government call for more international aid to help the refugees as they face a ‘difficult year’.
Rohingya refugees wait to receive food supplies at a World Food Programme (WFP) distribution centre in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh [File: Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters]
Concerns are mounting over the World Food Programme’s (WFP) decision to slash food support for the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh due to a funding crisis.
On March 1, the WFP, citing a $125m donation shortfall, cut the monthly food vouchers for the refugees from $12 to $10 per person, warning further cuts were “imminent” without an immediate cash injection.
Myanmar Rohingya refugees in a refugee camp in Teknaf, in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar. Photo: Munir Uz Zaman, AFP
The United States announced on Tuesday $26 million in new humanitarian aid for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and elsewhere in that region of Asia.
Around one million members of the mostly Muslim Rohingya community live in squalid relief camps in Bangladesh, many after fleeing a 2017 military crackdown in neighboring Myanmar. The onslaught caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
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