Richard Corbett: Small nation that needs our help in refugees crisis

There is a race against time to avoid the worst of this “catastrophe within a catastrophe” by re-locating their makeshift shelters elsewhere. The Bangladesh government even wants to relocate 100,000 to an island off the coast. And this is just one of several camps – with altogether over a million people – facing the same problem.

The refugees have already faced trauma. Driven out of their homes and villages by the Myanmar (Burma) military, police and even their civilian neighbours in what is described as a textbook case of ethnic cleansing, they have seen family members killed and many have themselves been tortured or raped. We met new arrivals, some with horrific injuries. We met a young boy with four letters inked onto his arm: initials of his four friends left behind whom he will probably never see again.

An aid agency employee who has worked in Yemen (and knows what horror means) told me this is the worst she’s ever seen.

There are some 27,000 unaccompanied minors, whose parents were killed or who have otherwise become separated from them. When separated, how to reunite them, even assuming they have family members somewhere in one of the camps? There are no addresses, they have no phones and 70 per cent are illiterate and cannot read descriptions or notes about found children. One way is to post photos of found children around the camps, but how to do it the other way – those searching for a missing child or parent, or at least to have news of what happened to them? One agency has deployed artists to sketch drawings based on descriptions made by the parent (or child), which can then be copied and circulated.

Almost all the world’s Aid Agencies are there, doing fantastic work, each in their specialised fields: medicine, food, shelter, children.

Makeshift medical centres, usually with long queues, can be found across the camps, as can makeshift schools teaching children in shifts. The medical centres are desperately trying to vaccinate everyone against cholera and other communicable diseases, overcoming initial reluctance from people who have never before had (or even heard of) injections.The schools are officially called “children zones” or “learning centres”.

Bangladesh will not allow anything that gives the impression that the refugees are settling permanently.

Bangladesh – one of the world’s poorest countries – has been admirable in letting the refugees cross the border and welcoming them and proving help. The villages around the south of Cox’s Bazaar have borne the brunt. We visited a fishing village where refugees outnumber the locals but they have been welcomed and help on the fishing boats. Aid agencies are aware that help must be given to the host communities too.

There are also worries that religious extremists may find recruits among the refugees – with some signs that radical preachers are appearing in the camps to exploit the obvious resentments. Some Bangladesh politicians try to exploit such feelings. There is an election this year and the government is insistent that the refugees must not leave the camps and must return to Myanmar as soon as conditions allow.

But there’s the rub. Will conditions ever allow it? Most refugees would dearly like to return – provided it is safe to do so. But given that their villages and homes have been burned, that Myanmar does not recognise them as nationals, that the perpetrators of the violence against them are still there and that the government of Myanmar shows no acceptance of its responsibilities, let alone a willingness to allow international observers or security enforcement into the area, it is not surprising that very few want to return. An agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar last November for repatriation of a first voluntary group has remained a dead letter.

So, either international pressure on Myanmar produces results – and it will take a lot more for it to do so, or else the refugees are going to have to be permanently integrated into Bangladesh A country of 165 million should be able to absorb one million linguistically and religiously similar people – after all, Germany is doing so for over a million culturally very different Syrians.

But Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries on the planet. A huge effort, not least on housing and education will be needed. It cannot do so without help.