More than 100,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh threatened by monsoon landslides and floods

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Rohingya refugee Arafa Begum, 40, stands outside her shack on a hillside in Chakmakul camp in southern Bangladesh, on February 8, 2018. The start of the annual monsoon could bring floods and landslides to refugee camps of Rohingya living on the border of Bangladesh. Photo: Reuters

Published: 2:01am, 10 Mar 2018Updated: 2:52am, 10 Mar 2018

The Rohingya refugees who live in shacks clinging to these steep, denuded hills in southern Bangladesh pray that the sandbags fortifying the slopes will survive the upcoming monsoon.

“They make it safer, but they won’t hold if the rain is really heavy,” said Mohammed Hares, 18. Cracks have already formed in the packed mud on which his shack is built.

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since last August to escape a military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar. Most now live in flimsy, bamboo-and-plastic structures perched on what were once forested hills.

Bangladesh is lashed by typhoons, and the Rohingya camps are clustered in a part of the country that records the highest rainfall. Computer modelling by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) shows more than 100,000 refugees will be threatened by landslides and floods in the coming monsoon.

The rains typically begin in April and peak in July, according to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department.

In Kutupalong-Balukhali, the biggest of the makeshift camps, up to a third of the land could be flooded, leaving more than 85,000 refugees homeless, according to the UNHCR. Another 23,000 refugees live on slopes at risk of landslide.