April 15, 2019
By Jason Beaubien
It's high tide in Cox's Bazar and there's a traffic jam right on the beach at Bangladesh's most prominent seaside resort. The lone road that leads south to the sprawling new camps sheltering hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees is closed for repairs. All the traffic has been diverted onto the gray sand beach, where people are taking selfies and strolling in the shallow surf.
Motorized rickshaws get stuck in the sand on the beach
in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. All traffic heading south out of town was
diverted on to the beach when the main road was closed for repairs.
Jason Beaubien/NPR
Little green rickshaws jostle with passenger vans and pickup trucks to get over a sand dune and back onto the paved roadway to head in the direction of the camps. At high tide, some of the vehicles get stuck in the wet sand, blocking those behind them.
The sudden influx of 700,000 refugees in 2017 has had a huge negative impact on the local community, says Mohammad Abul Kalam, the head of Bangladesh's Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission in Cox's Bazar.
"We're being outnumbered by the sheer number of the refugee population," he says.
Beyond this, "The infrastructure has been under unbelievable pressure," Kalam says — not just from the refugees themselves, but also from the tremendous aid effort underway to keep so many people sheltered, fed and healthy.
Kalam is the Bangladesh government's top local official regarding the Rohingya. He says the area's roads and bridges are being beaten up by convoys of aid vehicles shuttling from Cox's Bazar to the camps.
"They were not meant for this much population," he says.
Kalam points out that Ukhiya, the administrative district that includes the camps, has a population of 230,000 people. "Yet we now have more than 700,000 in the refugee population," he says. "So the entire demographic balance has been reversed."
Late in 2017, Rohingya fled from Myanmar into Bangladesh to escape attacks by soldiers and pro-government militias. The U.N. and human rights groups condemned the attacks as a campaign of ethnic cleansing and an organized effort to drive the Rohingya out of Myanmar.
The sudden influx of 700,000 refugees in 2017 has had a huge negative impact on the local community, says Mohammad Abul Kalam, the head of Bangladesh's Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission in Cox's Bazar.
"We're being outnumbered by the sheer number of the refugee population," he says.
Beyond this, "The infrastructure has been under unbelievable pressure," Kalam says — not just from the refugees themselves, but also from the tremendous aid effort underway to keep so many people sheltered, fed and healthy.
Kalam is the Bangladesh government's top local official regarding the Rohingya. He says the area's roads and bridges are being beaten up by convoys of aid vehicles shuttling from Cox's Bazar to the camps.
"They were not meant for this much population," he says.
Kalam points out that Ukhiya, the administrative district that includes the camps, has a population of 230,000 people. "Yet we now have more than 700,000 in the refugee population," he says. "So the entire demographic balance has been reversed."
Late in 2017, Rohingya fled from Myanmar into Bangladesh to escape attacks by soldiers and pro-government militias. The U.N. and human rights groups condemned the attacks as a campaign of ethnic cleansing and an organized effort to drive the Rohingya out of Myanmar.
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