Nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees have entered Bangladesh from Myanmar since September 2017. The Bangladeshi government’s plan to start repatriating them beginning this Tuesday, Jan. 22, has been postponed due to concerns about their safety.
That the Bangladesh government agreed to the delay, speaks to its benevolent attitude toward the Rohingya refugees. In a recent trip to Bangladesh I witnessed this benevolence firsthand. I saw roads adorned with pro-refugee banners. Even those with opposing political views have come together to support the Rohingyas.
The Bangladesh case stands in stark contrast to what happened in Europe in 2015, which faced an influx of a similar number of refugees, where many European countries saw rising anti-refugee sentiment among its political parties and a lack of a cohesive refugee management plan in the European Union.
In Bangladesh, I witnessed how the refugee camps were being run in an efficient, effective and compassionate manner.
The Refugee Problem
In August 2017 the Bangladeshi government allowed into the country a large influx of Rohingya refugees, who were escaping massacre by the Burmese military. The Burmese government claims that it was rooting out Rohingya terrorists who had attacked military posts. The United Nations, however, called these attacks “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
Since then, a massive number of Rohingyas crossed the border to come into Bangladesh, known to be one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Currently, over half a million Rohingyas are living in refugee camp sites. The estimated costs of hosting them is US $1 billion dollars a year.
The Camp Management System
During the first few days of January, I visited the camps and witnessed firsthand the scale of operations necessary to manage the camps.
Since the beginning of the crisis, the Bangladeshi government set up a separate civilian authority to manage the refugee crisis. All domestic and international aid agencies must gain approval…