As thousands of Rohingya refugees who have taken shelter in the makeshift camps in Cox's Bazar have started feeling the bite of pre-monsoon rain, human rights bodies and development partners have expressed grave concerns over their fate in the coming months when the real monsoon will set in.
In the last couple of days the camps witnessed heavy downpour. Representatives from international agencies like UNHCR, IOM, Save the Children, MSF, who are working here to provide aid to the Rohingya people, said the monsoon season, which begins in earnest in about a month, will potentially imperil hundreds of thousands of the displaced people huddled in low-lying makeshift camps, report international news agencies.
Since August 25 last year, over a million Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh from their native homes in Rakhine state of Myanmar in the face of brutal atrocities conducted by the Myanmar security forces. Authorities completed biometric registration of 11,06,264 Rohingya people until Sunday in Cox's Bazar. They bring with them stories of murder, rape and the destruction of villages at the hands of the military.
A volunteer of the Save the Children said, as we feared, this first deluge is already wreaking havoc on the camps, with a number of low-lying areas flooded and access made much more difficult. It was alarming how quickly dirt turned into mud and puddles the size of wading pools formed.
In Bangladesh monsoon lasts until October. According to meteorologists, the Cox's Bazar area likely to experience heavy rain bringing further hardship for the already vulnerable refugees.
UN officials working there said monsoon will damage people's shelters, flood roads and will make access to the camps extremely difficult.
Cyclone is also frequent during this period and if a big storm hits the camps, it would be nothing short of disastrous, they added.
These seasonal storms, which are more prominent between April and November, would have the potential to damage these camps fairly severely.
Hillsides around the camps have been denuded of trees, which has left the underlying soil vulnerable to landslides. The camps' sewage and drainage systems, which are rudimentary, are also prone to failure, meaning that the spread of water-borne diseases like cholera is likely.
"With the flooding and accumulation of stagnant water, water- and mosquito-borne diseases are all the more likely to spread because of the refugees' severely overcrowded living conditions and very poor sanitation," said medical aid group Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) emergency coordinator in Cox's Bazar, Francesco Segoni.
Refugees are "facing grim conditions in overcrowded refugee camps where they rely on food rations to survive, but now they have to worry about dangerous storms, heavy rains and the risk of flooding and landslides, as well as an increased likelihood of outbreaks of disease," Cook said.
"This weather is particularly concerning for children, who risk becoming separated from their families and caregivers, as well as developing skin diseases due to increased humidity. They also risk losing access to vital services like health clinics, nutrition centres and child-friendly spaces, which provide them with a sense of calm and happiness in the camps."
Aid groups, the Bangladesh government and non-governmental agencies have been preparing for the annual deluge for months, but the situation is made almost impossible to manage, given the scale of the refugee crisis.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told CNN that a survey commissioned by the agency estimated more than 100,000 people in the main settlement, Kutupalong-Balukhali, were at high risk of floods and landslides and should ideally be relocated.
Earlier in the year the government allocated 500 acres of new land to house relocated refugees, "which is massively welcomed, but we still believe the sites are not large enough to move everyone who needs to be moved," Caroline Gluck, UNHCR Senior Public Information Officer, said last month.
UNHCR and its partners have also been delivering tens of thousands of shelter kits, to ensure that families have "sturdier, more robust and waterproof shelters."
According to Our Correspondent in Cox’s Bazar, biometric registration of 1,106,264 Rohingya people was completed until Sunday in six camps out of 12 in Ukhia and Teknaf upazilas of Cox's Bazar.
According to official sources, the Passport and Immigration Department registered names of more than 1.16 million (11.6 lac) Rohingya refugees so far. Of them 568,257 are male and 538,007 female. Refugee Relief and Repatriation (RRRC) Commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam confirmed this.
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