Monsoons take toll on Rohingya camps

COX’S BAZAR, BANGLADESH » If it hadn’t been for her neighbors, Toyoba Khatun would almost certainly be dead.

The 65-year-old Rohingya refugee was buried alive on June 10 after her home collapsed in the first rains of the monsoon. A video of her rescue shows her face weary with exhaustion as men dig frantically to pull her from the mud that minutes before had been a part of the hill on which she lived.

“Allah didn’t take me, but he could have,” Khatun said a few days later, still weakened by the ordeal.

Bamboo and tarpaulin are all that the Rohingya — hundreds of thousands of whom crossed into Bangladesh after fleeing a military crackdown in Myanmar — have as shelter from the heavy rains and cyclones that lash the region each year. The rains have already caused 100 landslides this season, most of which were small in scale, and aid agencies estimate 185,000 people are at immediate risk of being caught in the landslides or floods in the coming months as storms batter the world’s largest refugee camp.

Concerns over shelter are just the beginning. Aid workers fear that rains could cut off homes from receiving food, gas and medical help. Young refugees are especially vulnerable to malnutrition. Latrines could collapse into the muck, creating a sanitation nightmare. Cases of diphtheria — a disease that has now nearly vanished in the West but has made a comeback in the camps — could see a catastrophic surge as immunity declines.

Aid groups have been preparing for this since February by leveling hills and relocating a fraction of the most vulnerable people to homes on safer land. But space is tight — Bangladesh’s government has allocated a limited amount of land for refugees — so at best, only 40 percent of those at risk will be relocated this monsoon season, said Frederic Cussigh, senior field coordinator for the United Nation’s Refugee Agency, or UNHCR.