Aid agencies put to the test in Bangladesh
DHAKA: How do you feed and shelter nearly half a million traumatised people who have made their way, over the course of just one month, to a spit of monsoon-soaked land where 300,000 refugees are already living in squalor?
That is the challenge for aid workers scrambling to help the Rohingya now crowded into the Cox’s Bazar region of southern Bangladesh after a spasm of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state sent them fleeing across the border.
“Nothing comparable, in terms of the number of people arriving in such a short space of time, has happened since 1994 in Rwanda,” said Christopher Lom, an Asia-Pacific spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration.
About 480,000 Rohingya have arrived in Cox’s Bazar since the end of August, according to United Nations estimates. Most came with nothing more than the clothes they wore. Nearly 200 of the women have given birth since they arrived and another 20,000 are pregnant.
Meeting the needs of such a vast number – indefinitely, as there is nowhere else for them to go – in one of the poorest regions of a poor country is a logistical nightmare for the Bangladesh government, UN agencies and aid organisations.
There was a taste of things to come in October last year, when a smaller outbreak of violence brought an influx of 80,000 Rohingya. That prompted improvements in infrastructure and coordination in Cox’s Bazar, said the UN’s local chief coordinator Robert Watkins.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said after a visit to Cox’s Bazar this week that the most urgent needs were shelter, clean water and sanitation.
“The first order of business ... is to get people out of the mud and the despair in which they are finding themselves into a place where organised relief can be provided,” he told a news conference in Geneva.
“The combination of limited health facilities, poor sanitary and hygiene conditions and overcrowded sites ... is a recipe for disaster in terms of possible epidemics.” — Reuters