‘I feel less scared’: safety alarms helping vulnerable Rohingya women in Bangladeshi camps escape abuse
The colourful plastic sirens are being distributed to women, girls and the infirm in Cox’s Bazar district, where an estimated 655,000 of the Muslim minority have arrived since August
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 most refugees in the sprawling Rohingya tent cities.
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 say women and girls, many of whom have arrived in Bangladesh alone, are at particular 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 Organization for Migration says.
In the teeming camps there is little privacy and overcrowding forces women to share latrines with men or venture into the jungle at night.