In Bangladesh, climate dangers menace ‘extremely vulnerable’ Rohingya refugee camps

Refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar that house nearly a million Rohingya Muslims are struggling to cope with the effects of supercharged weather events

Cyclones and fires have torn through the camps’ non-permanent shelters, as aid cuts mean refugees now receive just US$8 of food rations per month

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Rohingya refugees try to salvage their belongings after a major fire in a camp in Cox’s Bazar in March. Photo: AP

Published: 11:30am, 9 Oct 2023Updated: 1:35pm, 11 Oct 2023

Rohingya refugees living in temporary camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar are among the world’s most vulnerable communities to the climate crisis, according to a United Nations officer stationed in the country.

The vast camps house nearly a million Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority persecuted in their home country of Myanmar.

Bangladesh has opened its borders to the refugees, but policies including the requirement that they live in temporary shelters means they are less protected from monsoons and cyclones, Jing Song, senior operations coordinator for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told This Week in Asia.

Rohingya children are seen in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar. All infrastructure in the camps is temporary by design. Photo: Reuters

“The Bangladesh government’s position is that the only solution for the Rohingya crisis is that they have to return to Myanmar, so all the infrastructure in the camps has to remain temporary,” Song said in an interview last month.

As a result, all the infrastructure in the camps is made from bamboo and tarpaulin. This is of particular concern as Bangladesh weathers the climate crisis, worsened this year by the El Nino weather phenomenon, with temperatures in Dhaka touching 40.6 degrees Celsius (105.1 degrees Fahrenheit) in April – the highest in six decades.

Adding to the problems, Song said, are the cyclone seasons that Bangladesh faces twice a year – one between March and April, and the other from September to October. In May, Cyclone Mocha devastated thousands of makeshift shelters in Cox’s Bazar.

Some 40,000 refugees’ shelters were either damaged or completely destroyed by the cyclone. Song said many large fires had also broke out in the camps, with almost 3,000 shelters wiped out by a blaze in March that resulted in the displacement of around 16,000 refugees.