Rohingyas in unending perils without repatriation

Every monsoon brings a familiar sense of fear to the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar as thousands of families living in fragile bamboo and tarpaulin shelters on steep, deforested hillsides spend sleepless nights, knowing that a single landslide can bury entire families within seconds.

The latest monsoon has once again demonstrated the fragility of the world’s largest refugee settlement where at least 13 Rohingya refugees, including women and children, were killed in separate landslides recently.

Nearly nine years have passed since more than 740,000 Rohingyas fled Myanmar’s military crackdown in August 2017.

Together with those who had fled earlier waves of persecution, Bangladesh is now hosting around 1.2 million Rohingya refugees.

Despite years of international diplomacy, not a single repatriation has taken place because conditions in Myanmar remain unsafe and volatile.

The prolonged displacement has transformed what began as a humanitarian emergency into one of the world’s longest refugee crises.

Humanitarian agencies warn that the danger remains acute as further heavy rain is expected.

In one incident of landslide recently, at least seven students and a teacher had been killed in a girls’ school inside a refugee camp.

Golam Mostofa, Head of the Cox’s Bazar Area Office at Save the Children in Bangladesh, said, “The deaths of the students are a devastating reminder of the dangers children in the Rohingya camps face when extreme weather strikes.

They are living in one of Bangladesh’s most climate-vulnerable regions, where crowded camps cling to landslide-prone hillsides.”

“With the monsoon far from over, the risks remain acute. Continued rainfall is threatening to trigger further landslides, disrupting learning, damaging fragile shelters and leaving children exposed to serious health threats, including dengue, cholera and diarrhea,” he said.

The Rohingyas continue to face persecution in their homeland while living in exile under constant threat from landslides, cyclones, floods, fires, disease outbreaks, criminal violence and declining humanitarian assistance.

The refugee camps were established rapidly on steep hills after forests were cleared to accommodate the massive influx in 2017.

Although extensive slope stabilisation and drainage works have been carried out by humanitarian agencies, thousands of shelters remain exposed to landslides every monsoon.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, more than 770 floods and landslides have affected the camps since 2017, impacting hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Weather related disasters have damaged shelters, schools, health centres, roads, bridges and water facilities almost every year.

The camps have also witnessed repeated tragedies caused by fire. The catastrophic blaze in March 2021 killed at least 15 refugees, displaced about 45,000 people and destroyed thousands of shelters and community facilities.

Several major fires have followed, repeatedly forcing families to rebuild their lives from scratch.

Security challenges have added another layer of vulnerability. Armed groups, human trafficking networks, kidnappings and criminal violence have become persistent concerns, particularly after dark, while women and children remain especially vulnerable.

Meanwhile, humanitarian agencies warn that funding shortages are affecting food assistance, healthcare, education, nutrition and protection programmes.

Aid workers fear that reduced support will leave refugees even less resilient to natural disasters.

Bangladeshi refugee expert Professor CR Abrar, Executive Director of the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit, said the Rohingya crisis should no longer be viewed solely as a refugee emergency but as a protracted human security crisis.

“Rohingyas remain trapped in uncertainty, while Bangladesh continues to shoulder a responsibility that the international community must share.

Without a durable political solution in Myanmar, these recurring disasters will continue to claim lives,” he said.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi has repeatedly warned that shrinking international solidarity is compounding the crisis.

“Brutal funding cuts in the humanitarian sector are putting millions of lives at risk,” he said.

Former Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland has also warned against allowing the crisis to become normalised.

“The fact that millions of displaced people are cast aside, year after year, without even basic support and resources, is in no way inevitable,” he said.

Humanitarian organisations describe the Rohingya situation as one of the clearest examples of “protracted displacement”.

Experts say that the lingering of the repatriation has become not only a humanitarian crisis but also a potential destabilizer for the wider region.

Former Dhaka University teacher Prof. Imtiaz Ahmed told the New Nation : “The Myanmar government must be made to realise that resolving the Rohingya issue will be beneficial for them.

That is why the solution has to involve both the Myanmar government and the Arakan Army.”

Highlighting the importance of Myanmar’s neighbours, he said, “China and India are Myanmar’s closest neighbours; their actions will be extremely important.”

Last year the current Foreign Minister Dr Khalilur Rahman who previously served as National Security Adviser and High Representative for the Rohingya Issue in the Interim Government told the New Nation, “To resolve this problem, everyone in the region must be involved.

Although it originated in Rakhine, it has long persisted across the entire region,” “The Myanmar government needs to determine its future political framework.

Not only China and India, but ASEAN is also a factor. Malaysia, for example, is quite interested in resolving this issue, as around 200,000 Rohingya live there. So, they too are under pressure.

The solution must come through sitting with all parties together and finding a way forward, he said.

As another monsoon gathers strength, humanitarian agencies continue relocating vulnerable families, reinforcing slopes, and preparing emergency response teams.

Yet they acknowledge that such measures can only reduce the risks, not eliminate them.