A Rohingya refugee points to the landslide that killed two of Abdu Rozork’s daughters and two of their children in their bamboo shelter in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, last month. Credit: Mohammed Zonaid/IPS

By Mohammed Zonaid
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Aug 6 2026 (IPS)

Abdu Rozork awoke suddenly to the sound of children screaming. Heavy monsoon rains had sent a landslide barrelling into the section of their bamboo shelter where the women and children were sleeping.

Neighbours rushed to help dig through the mud with their bare hands, but it was too late. Two of Rozork’s daughters and two grandchildren were killed.

Having fled war in Myanmar only two years earlier, Rozork had believed his family would finally find safety among the over one million Rohingya refugees living in densely packed camps in Cox’s Bazar, southeast Bangladesh.

“I escaped conflict in Rakhine State to save my family,” he told IPS. “But I could not save them here.”

Early waves of Muslim minority Rohingya fleeing violence and persecution in Myanmar were housed in the first large-scale camps set up in Cox’s Bazar in the early 1990s. In 2017 a devastating crackdown by the Myanmar military against the Rohingya community and militants in Rakhine State forced another mass exodus, this time of over 700,000 refugees, creating the world’s largest refugee settlement.

Since 2024 and the disintegration of Myanmar amidst civil war, these overcrowded camps have been joined by further waves of civilians fleeing a complex conflict between the junta and the Arakan Army (AA), an ethno-nationalist insurgent group that has seized control over much of Rakhine State, as well as the involvement of Rohingya militants. According to data released by UNHCR, by June those new arrivals in Cox’s Bazar numbered 153,640.

But no new land has been allocated to this recent wave of refugees for building shelters. Many families now have to share with relatives or build makeshift homes on steep hillsides vulnerable to landslides and flooding. Cutbacks in international funding have also led to cuts in classes for children and reduced food rations.

Days of heavy rain since early July triggered landslides and flooding in several of the camps, killing at least 17 people and displacing more than 3,000, according to Human Rights Watch.

Rozork said he had repeatedly asked humanitarian agencies for help with tarpaulins and to make a retaining wall. His bamboo shelter stood at the foot of a hill, and rainwater was coming in.

But organisations responsible for site management told him assistance was unavailable because his family had only recently arrived in Bangladesh. “No one warned us that the shelter was in a dangerous place,” he said. Days later the mud swept down.

His family’s tragedy is one of many among the newest Rohingya arrivals who escaped one crisis only to enter another.

Mohammed Kayes, now 13, was attending school in Buthidaung Township in northern Rakhine when fighting intensified between the Myanmar military and the AA, spreading towards his village. Schools closed, food became scarce, and medical services disappeared.

His family fled through forests and villages for seven days before reaching the Bangladesh border. During the journey, Kayes said Arakan Army members detained his family. After several days, they released them but later took his father away for what they described as questioning. He never returned.

After finally reaching Bangladesh, tragedy struck again. His mother, suffering from a stomach tumour, died after months of illness despite efforts to obtain treatment.

Kayes now helps care for his younger siblings while living with his grandmother. He receives food rations, but with the loss of his mother, they do not qualify for gas cylinders to cook.

His dream is to become a teacher. “I want to study,” he told IPS. “I want to build my future.”

Sawfowan’s dream is to work for the United Nations, but conflict also engulfed his village in Buthidaung, closing schools. “We heard gunfire almost every day,” the 17-year-old said. The men in the family had to flee over a year ago to avoid forced conscription by the AA.

His family struggled to obtain medicine for his diabetic mother, so in May they also decided to flee. According to Sawfowan, Bangladesh border authorities twice pushed the family back across the frontier, but they managed to enter on a third attempt and reunite with relatives inside the camps. Several families now share a single bamboo and tarpaulin shelter.

“I feel safer here,” he said. “But life is still very difficult.”

Community leaders say such experiences are increasingly common among the newest arrivals.

Mohammed Musa, a Rohingya youth leader, said families consistently report forced displacement, disappearances, movement restrictions and food shortages in Rakhine.

“Many arrive carrying deep trauma after losing relatives or surviving repeated displacement inside Myanmar,” he said. “But once they reach Bangladesh, they face another struggle.”

UNHCR says newly arrived refugees receive food assistance, cooking gas, core relief items and protection services under existing government approvals. However, the agency acknowledges that the absence of new land and severe funding shortages have limited humanitarian efforts to relocate families to safer areas or improve shelter conditions.

“The recent loss of lives due to the heavy monsoon rains is a tragic reminder of how vulnerable the camps remain,” Shari Nijman, UNHCR Bangladesh Communications Officer, said.

As conflict continues in Myanmar, Bangladeshi authorities say Rohingya are crossing the border every week despite tighter controls.

The Arakan Army now controls most of Rakhine State but the capital, Sittwe, and has driven Rohingya from their homes. Survivors and rights groups have documented allegations of forced recruitment and mass killings of Rohingya in the village of Hoyyar Siri by the Arakan Army in May 2024, as well as drone attacks on people gathering on the border, burning of villages, arbitrary arrests, and other abuses. The AA denies it carried out the Hoyyar Siri massacre.

Myanmar military airstrikes also continue to displace civilians across the state.

Rohingya fleeing the violence have also been pushed back at the Bangladesh border, while hundreds have died attempting dangerous sea crossings and falling victim to traffickers.

As in many conflicts worldwide, Bangladesh and the international community are faced with a complex crisis where divisions between refugees and combatants become blurred.

Despite the risks, the exodus has not stopped. “Our reports suggest that every week 50 to 60 new Rohingya are entering Bangladesh,” Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mizanur Rahman told The Daily Star in July.

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A Rohingya family is relocated by boat from a flooded refugee camp in Cox's Bazar on July 6 while men fish nearby. Credit: Mohammed Zonaid

By Mohammed Zonaid
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Jul 10 2026 (IPS)

Landslides and flooding triggered by heavy monsoon rains swept through the world’s most densely populated concentration of refugee camps this week, killing at least 14 Rohingya refugees, most of them women and girls.

Three girls and their teacher were killed in an Islamic learning center hit by a landslide on July 8. At least 10 more refugees were killed in separate landslides in six camps.

Thousands of families in the camps in Cox’s Bazar, southeast Bangladesh, have been relocated to safer places, mostly at learning centers. Hundreds of ‘homes’ – tarpaulin and bamboo shelters – have been destroyed and flooded.

Tragically such disasters are commonplace, especially in the cyclone and monsoon season. The deaths have also prompted the predictable response by aid agencies to call for more funding.

But beyond the immediate effort of rescuing survivors, what is now really needed is an urgent focus on how the money available is actually spent – as revealed in the alarming findings of an audit by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).

OIOS Report 2025/084 raises serious concerns over UNHCR’s Rohingya response in Bangladesh in project planning, procurement, monitoring and effective use of humanitarian resources.

Mohammed Ahsom, 22, points to the site of a landslide where he rescued a child and helped to recover bodies in a Cox’s Bazar camp for Rohingya refugees on July 6. Credit: Mohammed Zonaid

As reported recently by the Bangladeshi newspaper New Age, millions of dollars were spent on infrastructure that remained unused; projects overlapped; procurement processes lacked sufficient oversight, and several programs failed to achieve intended objectives.

All this at a time when humanitarian aid is shrinking even while thousands more stateless Moslem Rohingya displaced by ongoing conflict in neighbouring Myanmar continue to arrive, joining a mass exodus of some 700,000 Rohingya who fled a brutal crackdown by the Myanmar military in Rakhine State in 2017.

Among the findings of the audit, a specialized hospital in Ukhiya costing US$1.5 million was built but remained unused. A 20-bed inpatient facility in Bhasan Char, with $140,000 of solar equipment and a $74,301 X-ray machine was also unused. In addition $18,000 was spent on honour boards, $23,000 on staff uniforms, and $27,000 on producing a documentary. The audit highlighted these expenditures as unnecessary while humanitarian needs remained urgent.

Perhaps most shocking, UNHCR spent $182,028 on cutlery (spoons, forks, knives etc) that refugees largely do not use because we traditionally eat with our hands. I have lived in one of the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps since 2017 and never found such things distributed to us.

In contrast, food assistance for most Rohingya refugees has been reduced from $12 to $7 per person per month— the cost of a couple of cups of coffee in many countries where those humanitarian staff are based and making decisions on cuts in food rations.

Informal learning centers that once provided at least a bit of education have in many cases become empty playgrounds. Hospitals built with millions of dollars often provide only basic, low-cost medicines such as paracetamol and omeprazole. A personal example — last year I had to buy Antozal nasal medication for my daughter from a local pharmacy after we waited hours in line to see two highly paid doctors. Later when we went with the prescription, we were told the drugs were not available because of funding cuts.

The audit also found that UN partners spent $4.2 million on shelter materials that UNHCR had already procured. Solar and energy projects costing $194,000, and medicines and medical equipment amounting to $800,000, were also duplicated because of faulty procurement.

The audit noted that eight years into the Rohingya crisis, 67 percent of funding had been spent on immediate humanitarian relief, while only 17 percent was allocated to empowerment and long-term solutions.

As yet UNHCR has not responded to questions by the media over the audit – not for the first time. UNHCR has often been criticized for responding only during major emergencies, such as large fires in the camps that attract international attention and are seen as moments to justify appeals for more funding spent on sustaining UN staff, their salaries and organizational costs.

Major international human rights organizations and international news outlets also show little interest.

Since the Myanmar military and allied Buddhist militia launched the killings and mass displacement of the mostly stateless Rohingya minority in August 2017, the international community has provided more than $5 billion in aid funding. The latest appeal by the Joint Response Plan (JPR) for 2026 is for $710 million.

Yet if you visit the refugee camps today you will find that there is still no formal education system, medical services remain inadequate, and durable shelters have not been built.

Refugees exist in shelters in hilly areas mostly denuded of trees and prone to catastrophic floods and landslides. Around 200,000 newly arrived refugees since 2024 have not been provided with shelter and live in extremely vulnerable conditions.

So my question is simple: Where did the billions of dollars go?

This is not just about the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar. The JRP for the Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis is led by the government of Bangladesh, the UNHCR and IOM and includes scores of UN agencies and international and national NGOs.

Each year the JRP is supposed to allocate some 20 to 30 percent of its funding to benefit Bangladeshi host communities.

However, many local residents living even within the camp perimeter have never received a bag of rice or an LPG cylinder. Their children have not benefited from livelihood or skills training programs. Many are not even aware that funding has been allocated for host communities.

The time has come to establish independent Quality Assurance and Financial Audit Committees for Rohingya camp operations. These committees should include representatives from relevant UN bodies, the government of Bangladesh, donor countries, independent human rights organizations, and the Rohingya diaspora. Their role would be to ensure that every project is genuinely needed by Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi host communities, and that they are properly implemented.

Humanitarian assistance should go to the people it is meant to serve—not become a system that primarily sustains thousands of jobs and does not provide for proper independent oversight.

Aid organizations should not be able to evade responsibility, as in these recent disasters, by blaming deaths on lack of funding.

Transparency, accountability, independent oversight and measurable impact must become the foundation of the Rohingya humanitarian response for as long as we Rohingya are not able to return to Myanmar with our rights, safety and dignity.

Mohammed Zonaid is an award-winning Rohingya journalist and photographer, in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

mohammedzonaid7@gmail.com

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The Rohingya did not choose dependency on aid. It was created by the restrictions surrounding them. Credit: UNHCR/Amanda Jufrian

By Mohammed Zonaid
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Apr 14 2026 (IPS)

While global attention right now is on escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel, and Iran, another crisis continues quietly in Bangladesh.

Beginning April 1, 2026, the World Food Programme (WFP) introduced a revised Targeting and Prioritisation Exercise (TPE) for Rohingya refugees living in camps in Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char, according to a statement released by the United Nations in Bangladesh on April 2.

Under the new system, refugee households will receive food assistance of $12, $10, or $7 per person per month, depending on their assessed level of food insecurity. Previously, all refugees received $12 per person.

On paper, vulnerability-based targeting appears reasonable. In many humanitarian crises, such systems help ensure that limited resources reach those most in need. However, the Rohingya context is different.

Nearly nine years after fleeing genocide and persecution in Myanmar, more than one million Rohingya refugees remain confined to camps in Bangladesh, according to the latest data from UNHCR Bangladesh including 144,456 biometrically identified new arrivals and 1,040,408 Registered refugees 1990s & post-2017. 78% them are Women and children.

Unlike refugees in many other countries, Rohingya in Bangladesh have extremely limited freedom of movement and cannot legally work or run small businesses within the camps. Refugees are also not formally employed by humanitarian organizations—except as volunteers receiving small daily allowances. As a result, they remain almost entirely dependent on humanitarian assistance.

Within this context, reducing aid raises serious concerns. When refugees are not permitted to engage in meaningful economic activity, food insecurity becomes less a household condition and more a structural outcome.

Humanitarian agencies have provided life-saving support for years, and their efforts should not be overlooked. But survival is not the same as stability. Instead of creating pathways toward self-reliance for Rohingya and local communities in Cox’s Bazar who are affected due to refugee statements, the current system has largely institutionalized dependency.

Many programs labeled as “livelihood initiatives” have not produced meaningful outcomes. Skills training programs—such as electrical repair or other technical courses—often fail to translate into real opportunities because refugees do not own motorbikes, electricity access is limited in many camp areas, refugees cannot legally move beyond the camps to seek work, and humanitarian organizations don’t employ trained refugees within their own operational structures.

This raises difficult questions: Why invest donor resources in skills that cannot realistically be applied? And what long-term strategy do these initiatives serve?

The new targeting model categorizes refugees as extremely food insecure, highly food insecure, or food insecure. Some vulnerable households—such as those led by elderly individuals, persons with disabilities, or children—will continue receiving the highest level of assistance.

Yet the broader reality remains unchanged: the entire Rohingya population in Bangladesh faces severe restrictions on economic participation.

Recent protests in the camps are often described as reactions to ration reductions. In reality, they reflect deeper concerns about uncertainty and the absence of long-term planning. Refugees are asking a simple question: What happens if funding declines further in the future? Where will we go? Well Bangladesh alone will be left dealing with the Rohingya crisis?

They want to send a message to the world: dependency on aid was designed around the Rohingya. It is time to think beyond relief and give them the tools to stand on their own feet.

Long-term strategic thinking is urgently needed. This includes serious discussions about ensuring safe and dignified lives in the camps until the Rohingya are able to return to Myanmar, expanding economic participation for refugees, and creating policies that allow them to contribute economically while remaining under appropriate regulation.

At the same time, Bangladesh itself is going through a transitional period after the election, and the new government and said it will work closely to make Rohingya repatriation possible and shared data on 8.29 lakh Rohingyas with Myanmar.

But the Rohingya crisis cannot be a lesser priority, the new government also needs to recognize that prolonged displacement cannot be managed indefinitely through restriction and relief alone—the same approach that largely characterized the policies of the previous government.

Carefully regulated work opportunities—such as camp-based enterprises, pilot employment schemes, or limited work authorization programs—could help reduce humanitarian dependency while preserving government oversight.

If even one or two members of each refugee household were allowed to work legally under controlled frameworks, humanitarian costs could gradually decline, camp economies could stabilize, and youth frustration could decrease.

Most importantly, dignity could begin to return.

After nearly nine years, international agencies have managed one of the world’s largest refugee operations with remarkable logistical capacity. Yet the central question remains: what durable systems have been created to help refugees stand on their own feet?

As global funding pressures increase and donor fatigue grows, humanitarian assistance is being recalibrated downward. Without structural reforms, this risks managing dependency more efficiently rather than reducing it.

The Rohingya did not choose dependency on aid. It was created by the restrictions surrounding them. Food assistance remains essential. But the future of an entire population cannot be defined solely by ration cards and vulnerability categories.

The Rohingya crisis requires more than improved targeting of aid. It requires policies that combine protection with participation and living with safety.

The world has learned how to feed the Rohingya.

The real test is whether it will allow them to stand—until the day they can safely return home to Myanmar with rights, safety, and dignity.

Otherwise, families quietly reduce meals. Young people seek unsafe informal labor. The risks of child labor, early marriage, unsafe migration. and involvement in illicit activities increase. When opportunity disappears, desperation fills the gap.

Mohammed Zonaid is a Rohingya SOPA 2025 honoree, freelance journalist, award-winning photographer, and fixer. He works with international agencies and has contributed to Myanmar Now, The Arakan Express News, The Diplomat Magazine, Frontier Myanmar, Inter Press Service, and the Myanmar Pressphoto Agency.

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