Ms. Khatoon, 34, fled Rakhine State in 2017 and gave birth to her second child in the field. She said she had turned her small cabin 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 for Bangladesh since a murder, rape and arson campaign began against them in 2017. The town of Cox’s Bazar in southern Bangladesh has become a makeshift home. for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing the Myanmar army’s campaign of violence. The Rohingya were persecuted relentlessly by the government and multitudes of Buddhists, who are the majority in Myanmar.
The settlements there became mega fields as the huge influx of desperate people fleeing war or persecution continued to arrive. Onno van Manen, national director of Save the Children in Bangladesh, said the fire was another devastating blow to displaced Rohingya Muslims.
Manen said that since 2017, more than a million refugees, half of whom are children, have lived in tight camps with little freedom of movement, inadequate access to education and abuse, including child marriage.
“Simply put, despite the tireless efforts of humanitarian communities, a refugee camp is no place for a child to grow up,” he said.
In May last year, a similar fire reduced more than 400 shelters to ash in the Kutupalang refugee camp near Cox’s Bazaar. And with the increase in population and the construction of new shelters over time, officials say it has become increasingly difficult for firefighters to navigate slums.
Bangladeshi authorities say they are trying to reduce the population in some camps, with a plan to move 100,000 people to an island in the Bay of Bengal. Human rights groups have criticized the plan, saying the Rohingya were once again forcibly displaced.