Me. Khatoon, 34, fled Rakhine State in 2017 and gave birth to her second child in the camp. According to her, she turned her little hut into a home for her family. Now, she said, she and her family had no food to eat and nowhere to go.
More than 730,000 Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh since a campaign of murder, rape and arson against them began in 2017. The city of Cox’s Bazar, in southern Bangladesh, has hundreds turning people into a temporary home. thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing the campaign of violence waged by the army of Myanmar. The Rohingya were relentlessly persecuted by the government and bullies of Buddhists, who make up the majority in Myanmar.
The settlements there turned into mega-camps while the tremendous influx of desperate people fleeing war or persecution continued to infiltrate. Onno van Manen, a country director of Save the Children in Bangladesh, said the fire was another devastating blow to the displaced Rohingya Muslims. .
Mr. Manen said that since 2017, more than a million refugees, half of whom are children, have lived in cramped camps with little freedom of movement, inadequate access to education and abuse, including child marriage.
“Despite the relentless efforts of humanitarian communities, it has been put simply, a refugee camp is no place for a child to grow up,” he said.
In May last year, a similar fire destroyed more than 400 shelters in the nearby Kutupalang refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar. And with the growing population and new shelters being built over time, officials say it has become increasingly difficult for firefighters to navigate slums.
Authorities in Bangladesh say they are trying to reduce the population at some camps, with a plan to relocate 100,000 people to an island in the Bay of Bengal. Rights groups have criticized the plan, saying the Rohingya were being forcibly relocated.