Ms. Khatoon, 34, fled Rakhine state in 2017 and gave birth to her second child in the camp. She said she made a home for her family out of her little hut. Now, she said, she and her family had nothing to eat and nowhere to go.
More than 730,000 Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh since a campaign against killing, rape and arson began against them in 2017. The town of Cox’s Bazar in southern Bangladesh has become a makeshift home for hundreds of people. Thousands of Rohingya refugees are fleeing the violence campaign carried out by Myanmar’s army. The Rohingya have been relentlessly persecuted by the government and mobs of Buddhists who form the majority in Myanmar.
The settlements there turned into mega-camps as the huge influx of desperate people fleeing war or persecution broke in further. Onno van Manen, a country director for 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 limited mobility, inadequate access to education, and abuse, including child marriage.
“Simply put, despite the relentless efforts of the humanitarian communities, a refugee camp is not a place for a child to grow up,” he said.
In May last year, a similar fire was burned to over 400 shelters in the nearby Kutupalang refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar. In view of the increasing population and the construction of new shelters over time, it has become increasingly difficult for firefighters to navigate in slum areas.
Authorities in Bangladesh 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. Rights groups have criticized the plan, stating that the Rohingya would again be forcibly evicted.
