Seeing the Largest Refugee Community: The Rohingyas in Bangladesh Before and During the 2020 Pandemic

Introduction

Bangladesh is now hosting over 1.1 million Rohingyas, mainly in the country’s southeastern part (Cox’s Bazar district). Since August 25, 2017, most of them entered Bangladesh amid military crackdowns in the Rakhine State of Myanmar. More than three years have passed, and not a single Rohingya has returned home, although Myanmar agreed to take them back. This chapter sets out to assess the lives and livelihoods of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh with particular reference to the 2020 pandemic. Based on our interviews with some NGO leaders, UN officials, and leaders from the Rohingya refugee groups, and some neighboring community leaders.

Conflict can have a profound and long-term negative impact on livelihoods. Those displaced by conflict are forced to adopt new strategies to provide for themselves and their households. New livelihood strategies may increase the risk of harassment, coercion, and exploitation against displaced people, who are already vulnerable as a result of their displacement (Helen, 2009). Conflicts and natural disasters threaten to take the lives of too many people and ruin their livelihoods all over the world (UNDP, 2013). The disruption of livelihoods and local economies is a direct result of conflict, which leads to instability, vulnerability, hunger, discontent, and idleness, all of which contribute to increased social and economic insecurity and human rights abuses. Conflicts and disasters disproportionately affect the young, old, women, and children, amplifying or causing weaknesses in other classes. Murder, sexual and gender-based abuse, abduction and human trafficking, and the forced recruiting of children and teenagers into war are common in crisis times. In crisis-affected families, access to food, hygiene, and education seems to dwindle. One billion people are thought to live in countries where the state is collapsing or where war has taken hold. Poverty, unemployment, injustice, a lack of independence and rights, and dependence on and exploitation of high-value natural resources are all factors that lead to violent conflict. Looting and loss of social and economic properties become routine when a war breaks out. When livestock, industries, highways, and bridges are lost, those who own primary assets, such as soil, water, and other natural resources, are disproportionately impacted.

At all levels, human displacement has become a persistent issue. People’s movement from their home countries to other areas due to wars and natural disasters has a variety of consequences. People’s livelihoods have been impacted in a variety of places all over the world. When forced to leave their home and farm, for example, displaced people often lose their assets. They could also be unable to return to their previous jobs, which may result in unemployment, underemployment, or regular work, as well as a substantial reduction in wages (Cazabat & Desai, 2018). Losing one’s livelihood will lead to a decrease in food availability and a rise in malnutrition. People are often separated from their property, possessions, belongings, workplace, social networks, service providers, and customers while they are internally displaced. IDPs and refugees compete for jobs in their host communities with local workers, and their arrival raises demand for goods and services, potentially driving up costs. These effects, which both have an economic and human impact, are reasonably well known and have a significant bearing on IDPs and refugees’ financial condition and their ability to maintain dignified livelihoods (UNDP, 2013).