Bangladesh
Since 25 August 2017, hundreds of thousands of people have crossed the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, fleeing violence in northern areas of Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Most of them are women and children. The bulk of the new arrivals are living in makeshift settlements in the Cox’s Bazar district in dire conditions.
Since August 2017, owing to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the northern areas of Rakhine State, Myanmar, hundreds of thousands of women, children and men – have crossed into Bangladesh. These vulnerable people, the newly arrived and those living in Cox’s Bazaar since last year, have no access to income sources and struggle to provide for the minimum levels of food and other essential needs required for survival. This is one of the largest and most complex crises in the region in decades.
The Bangladesh Red Crescent Society and IFRC response will provide 200,000 displaced people with support in medical health, mental health and psychosocial support, gender and protection, shelter, relief items, water, sanitation and hygiene, food security, and livelihoods.
An emergency appeal has been launched seeking 33 million Swiss francs to support the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society in its response.
Three-year-old Mohammed Sofit lies on the cold bare earth inside his family home. For the last 24 hours he has been suffering from chicken pox – an all too familiar ailment in the sprawling Kutapalong camp, built into steep hillsides close to the Myanmar-Bangladesh border.
Javeir, 20, was studying to become a medical doctor. His grandfather is a pharmacist and his grandmother, a midwife, so the desire to practice medicine runs in the family. On 25 August 2017, life changed dramatically for Javeir, his eight siblings, their parents and grandparents when they were forced to flee their home in Rakhine.
In a community centre in Tansimorkhola, at the southern end of the giant camp that is home to almost 800,000 people who fled Myanmar for Bangladesh, some impressive acting is going on. Staff and volunteers from a Bangladesh Red Crescent Society and Danish Red Cross psychosocial programme are putting local community volunteers through a series of likely scenarios for both monsoon and cyclone season.
More from Cox’s Bazar
Appeals
Press releases on the crises
More than 380,000 children risk losing their future as the situation in southeast Bangladesh threatens to become a prolonged crisis.
Cox’s Bazar/Geneva, 26 October 2017— The Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has made an impassioned plea for more support for people fleeing violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Speaking at …
Geneva/Cox’s Bazar, 24 October – The Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Elhadj As Sy, arrives tomorrow in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh where Red Cross and Red Crescent operations are continuing …