THE I DIPLOMATBy Paul McPhun
August 22, 2022
“Failing meaningful and safe return to Myanmar, I worry what the future holds. How long can people live with so little basic protection and hope?”
I have spent nearly 30 years exposed to emergencies and humanitarian crises. Yet, standing at our “Hospital on the Hill” in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, now the world’s largest refugee camp, I was taken by the sheer scale of this makeshift setting. A jumble of humanity packed together in precarious bamboo and plastic shelters, all contained within kilometers of razor wire fencing.
As we mark five years since the brutal campaign of violence meted out at the hands of the Myanmar military, I remember a Rohingya mother of six who said, “The military were brutally killing Rohingya and burning our houses… now, we live here in the refugee camps. It is five years of living in distress…”
The plight of the Rohingya – persecuted in Myanmar, living in containment in Bangladesh, trafficked and living illegally in Malaysia and elsewhere – is fast becoming a pressure cooker that no one seems inclined to take off the stove.