Rohingya refugees crisis

One month after the outbreak of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, more than 500,000 refugees uprooted by escalating conflict have fled across the border into Bangladesh.

The United Nations has warned that the conflict has now become “the world’s fastest developing refugee emergency,” and if the situation does not improve, more than 800,000 refugees could cross into Bangladesh by the end of the year. The majority of these people are children, women and elderly people: many are traumatized, malnourished, and in acute need of food, safe water, health care and mental health services.

More than 90 percent of the refugees who have recently arrived in Bangladesh from Myanmar are sleeping outside in the open air, with no shelter to protect them from wind and heavy rains. These extremely vulnerable women, children, and elderly people have no blankets, no beds, and no food, and fewer than 25 percent of them have access to toilets and showers. In Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where the majority of refugees have arrived, Action Against Hunger has scaled up its operations and is delivering daily hot meals to newly arrived refugees, as well as safe drinking water, health care, and psychosocial first aid.

According to initial rapid screenings, Action Against Hunger’s emergency teams estimate that among the newly arrived refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, 6 percent of children under the age of five are severely malnourished. If validated by rigorous technical assessments, this would indicate prevalence of severe malnutrition far above the emergency threshold. The refugees have also suffered significant psychological trauma, shock, and stress.