Screenshot:"We trained boradcasters in Bangladehs to make these shows." BBC Media Action, February, 2018.
As Bangladesh braced itself for the monsoon season, humanitarian organisations faced a multitude of challenges in preventing further tragedy for Rohingya refugees living along the Cox’s Bazar district, which has rapidly become the world’s biggest refugee settlement. Since August 2017, approximately 671,000 Rohingya people had been forced to flee their homes in Myanmar to seek refuge from persecution. Many landed in overcrowded camps and makeshift settlements, where 300,000 refugees were already residing under tarpaulins on steep, sandy slopes. The high risk of landslides threatened to make roads impassable, trapping refugees in hazardous locations and blocking them from aid delivery and medical services. Gender-based violence, waterborne diseases like diarrhoea and skin disease – all posed a great danger to the population.
Local host communities who initially responded with tolerance have been becoming increasingly hostile as legitimate concerns for their own livelihoods grew, regarding issues such as access to education for their children and job opportunities. For international NGOs, issues around security, data and trafficking are also prevalent, while everyday operations such as accessibility restrictions and a ‘coordination crisis’ between agencies, make aid delivery all the more challenging. Despite being described as ‘the most urgent refugee emergency’ facing the world by UNHCR chief Fillipo Grandi, relief funding for the Rohingya crisis continues to wane, with no sign of Myanmar being safe enough or in an appropriate condition for Rohingya to return home anytime soon. In April, the UN reported that only nine per cent of a $951 million joint agency response plan had been secured, with Cox’s Bazar specifically facing a shortfall of almost $151 million of the $182 million that was allocated. Aid agencies have been working tirelessly to ensure many refugees are provided with basic amenities such as toilets, baby care, water and food.
