RACE AGAINST THE RAINS
When the winds started blowing across the barren hills of the world’s largest refugee camp a few weeks ago, the flimsy tarpaulin tents housing hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees started flailing in the air.
Fred Witteveen, the national director of World Vision Bangladesh, watched as refugees climbed the bamboo poles and lay on their plastic roofs to stop their homes from being blown away.
Nine months after the largest migration of Rohingya refugees, the persecuted Muslim minority from Burma faces another threat as the first storms of the monsoon season hit Bangladesh this month. Over the course of the summer months, rainfall is expected to accumulate in the double digits almost every day in the Cox’s Bazar district, some days surpassing 65 millimetres.
The UN says the weather will put 10,000 refugees at risk and could flood one-third of the camp.
“We are all extremely worried,” said Witteveen, who is from Toronto. “The monsoon could devastate. We are preparing the best way we can, but the sheer volume of people makes it difficult.”
“We are in a race against time.”
While the country has learned to mitigate the dangers posed by the rains, the risks to the Kutupalong camp are new.
Satellite images taken a year apart show how drastically the geography and topography of the region have changed since the sudden influx of refugees. Kutupalong camp hosts two-thirds of the refugee population that has migrated to Cox’s Bazar (more than 550,000 refugees). Acres of undeveloped forestry and farmland have vanished. The few hills that remain are now being levelled to create more safe spaces for the refugees to live, until the political situation provides them with a permanent identity and home.
The root systems that once held the clay soil of the hills together have disappeared with the trees — both used for much-needed firewood by the refugees.
“The land they’ve settled on is fundamentally natural land that’s not been lived on before,” said Daphnee Cook, a spokesperson for Save the Children. “So we don’t know what’s going to happen.”
The first rains of May were “purifying,” Cook said, cleaning away a lot of dust that had gathered in the aftermath of the rapid new human settlement. But as the monsoons grow in strength, the topography of the region could change even more drastically.
The Naf River — the official border between Burma and Bangladesh, and the water system these refugees crossed on foot — will see rising water levels that will seep into the area.
“This could be a major disaster,” said Jean-Jacques Simon, of UNICEF Bangladesh. “Everything can go wrong ... the rains are the biggest threat to a refugee camp.”
The most recent wave of Rohingya refugees fled sectarian violence and military anti-insurgent operations beginning in August 2017. Then, stories of Rohingya crossing the river between Burma and Bangladesh — many pregnant, many young children and most on foot — grabbed the world’s attention. Photographs emerged that showed entire Rohingya villages burned to the ground.
Today, the suffering of this stateless population that is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Aid agencies on the ground have been preparing for the intense weather season ever since they arrived. The Rohingya people are accustomed to monsoon season but never under such precarious conditions. In Burma, also known as Myanmar, they all lived in “houses on stilts,” Cook said.
“We knew that it was coming,” Simon said. “We knew we had to be prepared for the season. Every year you have flooding. Every year you have heavy winds. Every year you have a cyclone.”
Recent light rains have already muddied the camp, making slippery vital access ways to health-care facilities, fuel and food.
The 12,000 people that were in the immediate path of floods and landslides were relocated. Shelter upgrade kits have been provided to more than 40,000 refugees to help strengthen their homes. These include large, sturdy bamboo stakes and strappings, extra tarpaulins, nails and ropes. The rootless hills have been reinforced, too, with hundreds of large sandbags — as have the latrines, drains, canals and staircases.
“The fear is that all this is just going to collapse under this three-month period of constant rain,” Cook said. The lands the most recent Rohingya refugees have settled on is untested, she added.
But there’s no other place for the refugees to go — they are confined to the limited space provided to them by the Bangladeshi government.
Shane Copp, an engineer from Newfoundland who has worked with the International Organization for Migration for eight months, has been overseeing the development of the camp. He has helped build what he hopes will be durable roads, bridges and essential structures that will last through the extreme weather.
Copp arrived in September 2017 when the rains were just ending. The wet weather was a new factor for the Ontario-based engineer who has worked in refugee camps in Haiti, Kenya and Somalia.
“When it rains, it pounds,” he said.
“The filthy clay soil becomes slippery and mucky. You don’t have a road anymore.” Copp and the IOM team are using bricks made locally to reinforce structures. Water drainage systems have been important factors in all plans. The tents are situated side by side all over the camp, separated by several tiny, winding footpaths that easily collect water, barring access to the supplies that, Simon said, the refugees need on a daily basis.
The main priority has been building a six-kilometre road down the camp. It’s the “spine” that runs north to south, Copp said, and provides main access to every aspect of the refugee hub. Ten water crossings have been built on that main road that are “mostly finished.”
“We can’t say the camp is permanent,” Copp said, “but we are designing it with a long-term period.
“There is a chance you could get a once-in-100-years flood tomorrow, and the bridge you designed to last that could only last one day,” he said. “But the goal is to get it to last for more than one rainy season.”
But there are challenges in weatherproofing the world’s largest refugee camp.
Stirred by anti-refugee sentiments in an election year, the Bangladesh government has barred any development that would make permanent the presence of the Rohingya at Cox’s Bazar. Brick roads and cement drains are allowed, but the use of concrete is not.
And then there’s the magnitude of the population.
“We’re dealing with a whole bunch of people in a space too small,” Copp said. “What people don’t realize is we didn’t start with a clean slate … We’re basically trying to build a small city with people already there.
“If you think what a city needs, it’s the same as what a camp needs,” he added. “Sewage treatment, water, sanitation, food, people having enough space.”
Starting a few weeks ago, more than nine kilometres of abandoned canals are being dug and renovated in Cox’s Bazar to allow the water to naturally run off during heavy rains. The hills are undergoing a cut-and-fill process to create additional high, safe ground for refugees to be relocated to.
“It’s challenging because there’s not enough available safe ground for everyone,” Witteveen said. “My fear is that all this won’t be enough.”
All the aid agencies have been working with Rohingya community leaders to create a network of community mobilizers that go door to door, talking about emergency preparation skills. Many are mothers.
“We’re making sure they know the whereabouts of services,” Simon said. “What to do in case you lose your children, who to contact … what to do in case your nearest water point is impacted.”
But Witteveen noted that “even if the tent doesn’t blow away, the risk of getting sick is quite high.”
The rain is expected to create unsanitary water conditions that could worsen precarious health conditions in the camp.
Aid workers are worried about outbreaks of acute diarrhea, diphtheria and mosquito-borne disease such as dengue and malaria.
On May 23, the Canadian government pledged $300 million over the next three years, which will go toward emergency assistance as well as education and reproductive health programs.
The amount is less than the recommendation made by Bob Rae, Canada’s special envoy to Burma, who called on the government to set aside $600 million over four years.
No intention, as of yet, has been declared to help resettle the refugees.
The money is encouraging to aid workers — evident by the numerous Canadian flags and logos that are visible across the camp — but they worry that once the spotlight dims, the aid will stop, too.
“There is a big difference between a bamboo structure and a concrete structure high off the ground,” Witteveen said. “This is about making sure that this community can be safe.”
Simon agrees. “We cannot prepare for more than their immediate safety.”
“The fear is that all this is just going to collapse under this three-month period of constant rain.” DAPHNEE COOK SAVE THE CHILDREN SPOKESPERSON