Safety alarms empower Rohingya women
COX’S BAZAR: A piercing wail emanates from the small device in the palm of a young Rohingya woman, drawing startled looks from other refugees crowded onto a hillside in a Bangladesh camp.
It has the desired effect — the safety alarms are designed to attract attention and scare off anyone preying on vulnerable women and girls, who make up the majority of refugees in the sprawling Rohingya tent cities.
The colourful plastic sirens are being distributed to Rohingya women, girls and the infirm here, where an estimated 655,000 of the Muslim minority have arrived since August.
They have escaped a systematic campaign of rape and violence in Myanmar described by the United Nations as ethnic cleansing, but the squalid camps across the border are not without dangers.
Aid groups said women and girls, many of whom had arrived in Bangladesh alone, were at risk of exploitation by pimps and human traffickers active in the camps.
There have already been cases of minors lured away by promises of marriage or jobs in big cities that have ended in brothel work or forced labour, the International Organisation for Migration said.
In the teeming camps, there is little privacy and overcrowding forces women to share latrines with men or venture into the jungle at night.
The alarms, fitted with a torch and highpitched siren, provide comfort for Rohingya women like 22-yearold Hazera Khatun, who frets about the safety of her two daughters.
The trio arrived in Bangladesh in September without Khatun’s
husband, who, she said, was gunned down by Myanmar soldiers as they fled their village.
“I feel safer and less scared after receiving this, because now I know that if I encounter any problem, I can call for help,”
Khatun said.
The local charity behind the alarms, Moonlight Development Society, developed the idea after hearing about abduction attempts on children in the camps. AFP