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Gallery|Rohingya

Monsoon season threatens Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

The UN estimates that about 200,000 Rohingya refugees, including over 100,000 children are threatened by flooding rains.

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Rohingya refugees shield themselves from the rain in Balukhali, Camp 10. Daily landslides are expected, and agencies have put in place a mass casualty plan, with an estimated 200,000 people at risk. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
By Siegfried Modola
Published On 3 Jul 20183 Jul 2018
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Cox’s Bazar – Nearly one million Rohingya refugees are currently in refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar. 

The majority are living in cramped conditions in the Kutupalong-Balukhali, the largest refugee camp in the world.

Children, the elderly, men and women all face difficult conditions in a sprawling temporary city built out of plastic sheets and bamboo.

More than 700,000 Rohingya have arrived since the Myanmar military launched a crackdown on the minority group in August of last year, resulting in what the UN has described as a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing”. 

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Forbidden from building anything resembling a permanent structure, the refugees are huddled on top of each other in this “mega camp”. And they’re now facing a new crisis: the monsoons.

Bangladesh gets intense cyclonic storms and some of the most intense monsoon rains on earth.

With an estimated 2500mm of rain due to fall over the next few months, parts of the camp are at risk of flooding.

According to UNICEF, about 200,000 Rohingya refugees – over 50 percent of whom are children – are threatened by the anticipated rains.

Some 900 shelters and 200 latrines have already been destroyed, according to figures provided by aid agencies. Water points have been washed away and people have been buried under collapsing mud walls.

Aid groups are trying to move families to safer ground, but with hundreds of thousands of people on site, it is impossible to move them all. And with the inundation, the risk of waterborne diseases such as cholera only grows.

Please Do Not Use/ Monsoon season threatening Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh
A girl wearing traditional makeup looks from her makeshift home during a heavy downpour in Kutupalong. Children are the most vulnerable to waterborne diseases, such as cholera, that flooding can bring. The UN estimates that half the 200,000 people threatened by flooding are children. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
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Please Do NOt Use/Monsoon season threatening Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh
A man stacks bamboo poles used to reinforce the shelters of Rohingya refugees who are threatened by monsoon rains. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
Please Do Not Use/ Monsoon season threatening Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh
A girl holds her baby brother in her family's makeshift home in Modurchara, Camp 5. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
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A man cleans a drainage ditch by his makeshift home during heavy rain in Chakmakul, one of the camps sheltering hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar. The beginning of the monsoon season is already eroding the foundations of many shelters. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
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Children carry sandbags to secure the sides of their makeshift homes for fear of landslides in Kutupalong. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
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Abdu Shukkur's makeshift home was swept away by a mudslide, killing his three-year-old son and severely injuring his wife. He laments not being able to save his son from the rain after having saved his children from the crackdown in Myanmar. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
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Mariom Kafun, 40, tries to remove mud from the inside of her shelter after a landslide damaged it during a night of heavy rain in Kutupalong. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
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A Rohingya refugee sits with his belongings as he waits to be relocated to safer ground during the intense rains in Balukhali, Camp 17. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
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Rohingya refugees shelter from the rain in Balukhali, Camp 10. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
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Rohingya boys play football in a flooded field in Charkmakul. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
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Rohingya children stand on a flooded bamboo bridge during torrential rain in Balukhali. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
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Rohingya men work a flooded field next to the Chakmakul refugee camp. With an estimated 2500mm of rain due to fall over the next few months, entire parts of the camp are at risk of flooding. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
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A boy carries firewood he found at a distance from the Kutupalong refugee camp. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]
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Children in a kiosk in Balukhali refugee camp. About 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August last year. [Siegfried Modola/Al Jazeera]


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