International aid agencies and Bangladeshi authorities are struggling to protect hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees against deadly monsoon landslides and floods ahead of the peak rainy season expected next month.
Just a few days of downpours and storms at the onset of a monsoon earlier this month triggered landslides and floods, killing two and injuring several refugees, as well as damaging thousands of shelters made of bamboo and plastic that are built on the slopes of muddy brown hills.
The shelters house most of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh since August last year to escape a military crackdown in Myanmar. The UN has called the campaign a textbook example of “ethnic cleansing” — a charge Myanmar denies.
Photo: AFP
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said that the number of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh has swelled to about 720,000.
They are living in sprawling and congested refugee camps around the town of Cox’s Bazar on the Bay of Bengal, which records Bangladesh’s highest rainfall and is prone to cyclones.
Aid and government officials have been working for several weeks to help build drainage systems, strengthen shelters and create better access routes.
However, they said they are facing challenges in moving refugees to safer areas, and that, with the monsoons having already begun, it has become a race against time.
“The possibility of relocating all of the ‘at risk’ Rohingya population is very limited and challenging,” said Caroline Gluck, a representative for the UNHCR in Cox’s Bazar.
She put the number of ‘at risk’ refugees at about 200,000, adding: “We are not able to move people as quickly as we want.”
The Inter Sector Coordination Group (ISCG), which represents the work of aid agencies on the ground, said that 45,000 refugees are living in the “highest risk” areas, but that only about 15,000 of them had been relocated as of Sunday last week.
Some more refugees have since been moved to safer areas, but many are still living in flimsy structures perched precariously on hill slopes, aid and government officials said.
About 7,000 more are expected to be moved to safer areas by the end of this month, but that would still not complete the relocation in time for the peak rains, which usually come to this part of the country by early next month, the ISCG said in last week’s update report.
Part of the problem has been finding suitable land and constructing shelters and facilities on it, officials said.
Big yellow bulldozers were seen crawling around sections of the camps to create flat land, and many refugees were cutting down bamboo to strengthen or rebuild damaged structures.
Minaroo, 25, said her two-month-old son was sleeping in her tent when torrential rains one afternoon last week caused a landslide, crushing her shelter built on a hill slope at the Balukhali refugee camp.
“It’s a miracle my baby survived,” she said, holding her son in her arms as she stood under the hill where her shelter once was.
She said she now sleeps in a temporary school in the camp, until aid officials move her to a shelter in a safer area.
“I don’t want to live there again, it is very dangerous,” said Minaroo, who uses only one name.
A Rohingya toddler and a male refugee were killed last week.
The Bangladeshi government has provided about 200 hectares of land for relocation, but only 40 hectares of it has so far been prepared for erecting shelters.
At least 9,286 refugees have arrived in Bangladesh since January, with almost 250 arriving in the two weeks to June 4, the UNHCR said in an operational update earlier this month.
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