A massive fire broke out Sunday in the middle of a refugee camp occupied by Myanmar Rohingya refugees in southeastern Bangladesh, leaving thousands homeless under the open sky. The number of casualties remains unknown although local officials said they managed to take many people away to safety while some refugees said they had missing family members.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), in the afternoon of March 5, the devastating fire broke out in Kutupalong Balukhali refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Flames blazed for some three hours in Camp 11, which is managed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Around 5pm, Rohingya refugee volunteers trained on firefighting, local fire fighters and local authorities managed to contain the fire.
The fire caused considerable damage to significant sections of the world’s largest refugee camp. So far, no casualties have been reported yet. The cause and origin of the blaze are unknown at this stage.
UNHCR said in a statement Monday before the fire Camp 11 was home to some 32,200 people. Over 2,000 shelters, mostly made of bamboo and tarpaulin, were destroyed or damaged by the blaze, leaving 12,000 refugee homeless. Many of the affected refugees lost all their belongings, which left many experiencing fear, despair, and hopelessness. Over 90 facilities were damaged including hospitals and learning centers.
The conditions in the camps make large fires a real risk. Sunday’s massive fire in the world’s largest refugee camp follows a string of devastating fires in recent years. This was at least the fourth major fire in the last three years.
According to IOM, in March 2021, a massive fire that broke out in the camp resulted in the loss of lives and left 45,000 homeless for days. In January 2022, a fire caused significant damage and was, unfortunately, followed by a second fire a week later where a section of the Rohingya refugee camp was razed to the ground, leaving more than 1,700 refugees affected with no fatalities.
More than a million Rohingya refugees are living currently at the Kutupalong and Nayapara refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar region. For decades, the Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority, have faced institutionalized discrimination in Myanmar, such as exclusion from citizenship. In August 2017, the Myanmar government launched a military campaign that forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine State to Bangladesh.
At least 740,000 Rohingya Muslims arrived in the already overcrowded Bangladeshi refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar district in 2017. The refugees are now living in the squalid spread of a 28-square-kilometer camp that was once a sanctuary for rare Asian wild elephants. Rohingya people have endured unspeakable hardship for years.
The devastating blaze occurred just days after the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced it will have to cut food assistance to Rohingya refugees for the first time since they fled Myanmar six years ago due to funding shortages. WFP said the first cut would be from $12 to $10 per person per month and would seriously impact food security and nutrition, which are already alarming.
Further information
Full text: Emergency response to the fire in Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, UNHCR statement, published March 6, 2023
https://data.unhcr.org/en/documents/details/99313
Full text: Thousands of Rohingya Impacted by Recent Camp Fire: IOM Responds, IOM press release, published March 6, 2023
https://www.iom.int/news/thousands-rohingya-impacted-recent-camp-fire-iom-responds