The Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar are succumbing to an environmental nightmare of deforestation, landslides, flooding and fires – exacerbated by cuts in international aid that have halted most efforts to mitigate the effects of such disasters.
By MOHAMMED ZONAID and REDWAN AHMED
Eight years ago, mass killings of Rohingya by the Myanmar military in Rakhine State forced Shohida and her family to flee across the border to Bangladesh.
Tragedy struck again in June last year when a nighttime mudslide in their refugee camp buried her mother, father, one of her three brothers, and sister-in-law as they slept.
It had been raining for days, and Shohida was awakened by a low rumble and then the crash of mud sweeping into their flimsy shelter of bamboo partitions and tarpaulin.
“I tried to run to my parents’ room, but it was too late,” she told Frontier. “The wall had collapsed in the mud, and I couldn’t open the door.”
She managed to break her way out of the shelter, screaming for help in the darkness. By the time neighbours and NGO workers arrived, it was too late to save her family.
For Shohida, now 15 and having spent over half her life as a refugee, even the sound of rain triggers trauma.
“Every time it rains, I get very scared,” said Shohida, who is left with two brothers who survived the mudslide. “I miss my childhood, when I used to sleep beside my parents. Now the nights are full of silence and fear.”
For decades the Rohingya crisis has been defined by persecution and violence, with successive generations of the Muslim minority denied Myanmar citizenship and stripped of their rights to education, healthcare and free movement.
In August 2017, over 740,000 Rohingya fled massacres and atrocities perpetrated by the Myanmar military in Rakhine, crossing into Bangladesh and joining hundreds of thousands who had arrived during earlier crises.
Now more than 1.1 million Rohingya refugees live in a network of 33 densely packed camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district that have merged over the years into a single sprawling settlement.
Over 120,000 of them have arrived since late 2023, when the Arakhan Army began launching attacks against the regime as part of Operation 1027. Since then, the AA has taken control of most of Rakhine and has also clashed with Rohingya militias.
Rohingya refugees sit on a Bangladesh Navy ship as they are relocated to Bhashan Char, Chittagong, on December 29, 2020. (AFP)
A crisis from the ground up
The refugee crisis in Bangladesh is increasingly shaped by the twin shocks of environmental devastation and sharp cuts in international aid.
Entire communities, with as many as 50,000 people packed into a square kilometre, live one rainfall or fire away from catastrophe. Such environmental hazards have emerged among the leading causes of death and serious disease in the camps.
The disaster that struck Shohida’s family occurred during heavy monsoon rains that triggered flash floods and landslides across the Cox’s Bazar camps. United Nations agencies and humanitarian organisations confirmed the deaths of 10 people, with nearly 1,200 shelters damaged or destroyed. Latrines, public water sources and schools were also destroyed.
The camps are located in an area that was once heavily forested. As the camps were hastily carved out of hilly terrain, trees were felled at breakneck speed, slopes were levelled, and bamboo-and-tarpaulin shelters sprang up by the thousands.
The result was extreme deforestation, overcrowding and a landscape now prone to fire, floods and landslides. Much natural drainage has been lost, leaving unstable terrain and a patchwork of erosion-prone slopes and waterlogged plains.
Meanwhile, most camps lack permanent infrastructure. Footpaths are carved by residents and reinforced only during emergencies. According to hazard maps produced by NASA and humanitarian agencies, the largest camp – Kutupalong – is also the most vulnerable. Safe evacuation of such densely populated areas is nearly impossible.
Seasonal rainfall can make the camps deadly, causing hillsides to collapse onto shelters. Strong winds can also damage the flimsy structures.
In the dry months, a different kind of danger threatens the camps. Fires, accelerated by flammable shelter materials and high winds, can sweep through entire blocks in minutes. In March 2021, a massive blaze destroyed 10,000 shelters and killed at least 15 people.
Many fires are suspected of being caused by cooking accidents – including faulty LPG cylinders – or even deliberate acts. Some fire investigations remain inconclusive.
Refugees also told Frontier that they had not received timely warnings of approaching disasters. “It was so unexpected,” Shohida said of the heavy rain and resulting mudslide that killed her relatives. “No organisations, including NGOs, alerted us or shifted us to a temporary location.”
Rohingya refugees clear debris at Balukali Camp after monsoon rains triggered landslides and floods on July 27, 2021, killing at least six. (AFP)
Cuts to international aid
Hefzur Rahman, 25, who lives in Camp 13, fled Myanmar in 2017 when his village was razed by junta troops.
Heavy rains in July destabilised the hill where his shelter stands, and he’s now afraid it could collapse at any moment. He alerted the International Organization for Migration about the situation, but said the response was inadequate. The IOM did not respond to a request for comment.
“They said they were facing a funding crisis,” Rahman said. “They didn’t offer any support, and said they couldn’t do much for a slope that big.”
At night he and dozens of others must sleep on the “least risky” side of their shelters. “We’re afraid of sleeping inside, but we have no choice,” he said.
Aid groups are aware of the risks. The Inter-Sector Coordination Group of humanitarian partners plays a central role in orchestrating humanitarian efforts across the camps. It brings together UN agencies, international NGOs and Bangladeshi authorities to align strategies, share data and respond to emergencies.
According to the ISCG, more than 180,000 refugees benefited from slope stabilisation, drainage improvements and hazard monitoring last year. Around 60,000 were relocated from high-risk areas – often just before or after severe weather events.
But these numbers cover just a fraction of the camps’ populations. The reality is that lifesaving interventions now hinge on a shrinking pool of international funding, stretched thin across a world of competing crises.
“Reduced funding amid continued exposure to extreme weather events has decreased partners’ ability to prevent and respond to emergencies,” said ISCG spokesperson Lucrezia Vittori. “It leaves critical gaps in risk reduction and maintenance.”
Last year, the Joint Response Plan coordinated by Bangladesh and humanitarian partners appealed for US$852 million in aid, but by the end of the year it was just 68 percent funded. This year’s JRP appeal grew to $935 million and by June 10 was only 36pc funded, according to the October 19 UN agency report.
A statement released by the UN Human Rights Council on July 31 said United States President Donald Trump’s sudden executive order on January 20 suspending foreign aid had “fuelled a global humanitarian catastrophe”.
Citing two independent experts on poverty, food and human rights, the statement added that worldwide, “More than 350,000 deaths stemming from the aid cuts have already been estimated, including more than 200,000 children.”
A UN conference on Rohingya and other minorities in Myanmar held in New York City on September 30 was strong on denunciations and pleas, but largely inconclusive in terms of political commitments. Annalena Baerbock, president of the UN General Assembly, said over 3.5 million Rohingya inside Myanmar “desperately need humanitarian assistance” while Bangladesh could “not shoulder this burden indefinitely”.
A US envoy at the conference called for a “ceasefire, humanitarian access and regional burden-sharing”, adding that the US intended to provide over $60 million in aid for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Britain, which also slashed aid budgets this year, announced an additional $36 million in funding.
Sweeping aid cuts have had a visible impact in Cox’s Bazar. Workers who once maintained hillsides and roads are gone. Storm drains are clogging and overflowing, and footpaths are collapsing. Shrinking donor support has forced frontline prevention efforts to scale back dramatically.
There are also legal and bureaucratic limits. Bangladeshi authorities prohibit permanent structures in the camps, fearing they might imply permanence. That means no concrete foundations and no brick walls are allowed – only tarpaulin, bamboo and rope that cannot withstand the cycles of monsoon and drought. Meanwhile, refugees are barred by Bangladesh from working outside the camps.
Rohingya refugees work to build a protective wall for two shelters that were damaged by a landslide in Kutupalong Camp on October 21. (Mohammed Zonaid)
Youths step in
Amid the chaos, some Rohingya youths have taken up roles vacated by governments and NGOs.
One of them is 21-year-old Azad Khan, founder of the Rohingya Green Nature Society. He watched hills get stripped of trees for firewood and shelter material, and knew something had to be done.
“In 2017, this place was full of greenery,” Khan said. “But we had to cut trees for shelters and firewood. By 2018, the hills were bare.”
His organisation, founded in 2020, has grown to 1,500 members across the refugee camps. They have planted trees, promoted awareness about environmental sustainability and taken part in emergency responses.
“If we are living here, it’s our responsibility to protect it,” Khan said. “We’re not working with any NGO – we started this ourselves.”
Their impact is undeniable. During recent floods, youth volunteers dug trenches, reinforced slopes and helped evacuate families. But they lack resources.
“We don’t need more sympathy. We need reinforced shelters, flood barriers, proper drainage, fire breaks and the dignity of not living in fear of the sky,” Khan said. “If international support doesn’t come, the next monsoon or cyclone will be much worse. Our shelters will fall. Our people will suffer. And we’ll be blamed for being vulnerable to disasters we can’t stop.”
Since the deaths of her family members, Shohida has stayed in Balukali Camp 10 with her two surviving brothers. By good fortune, her older brother, 18-year-old Mohammed Sadek, was in another camp visiting relatives the night of the mudslide. In an instant, his role shifted from grade 8 student to head of the household.
For Shohida, her “normal life” began with her parents in the camp, despite being stateless and driven out of her home country.
“I had a normal family before the mudslide. My father was a tailor and had a volunteer job at the Danish Refugee Council at Camp 10. My mother was a housewife,” she said. “I could only imagine having a life with mum and dad. I worried so much about my future.”
After the disaster, the DRC offered to relocate the surviving family members to a different camp but they declined. It would have meant separation from extended family and from community support.
“It was not safe to live there [in a different camp] with my young brother and sister who are still minors,” Sadek explained. “Now we live in a cousin’s shelter. But we’ve had no help to build anything safer where we are.”
Community support and cohesion is among the many casualties of the precarious situation in the camps. Rahman and his neighbours worry about sexual violence, especially at night when women feel unable to safely access distant toilets or bathing areas. A recent study by ActionAid, one of the largest humanitarian groups active in the camps, found that sexual harassment is one of the most pervasive threats facing Rohingya women and adolescent girls.
Women and children make up some 78pc of the refugees in Cox’s Bazar, according to the UN.
“Women can’t go to the toilets during the daytime because they are too far. At night it’s even riskier,” Rahman said. “There’s fear of sexual violence. We built a temporary toilet nearby until help comes.”
Meanwhile, Sadek told Frontier that he wants NGOs to repair the walls of the flimsy shelters with cement, “so that no other family loses their dad, mum and loved ones”. He added that he misses his father bringing home new clothes on special occasions, like the Eid al-Fitr festival marking the end of the month-long Ramadan period.
Shohida’s wishes are as modest as her brother’s.
“I just want a house that won’t break when it rains,” she said. “That’s all I want.”
