The Ongoing RohIngya Refugee Crisis

The contents of this blog is largely an excerpt of an article which appeared on World Renew’s website, written by Jonathan Self.  It has been modified for purposes of this blog. 

Looking at the global refugee crisis, it’s easy to ask questions. When will war end and peace return? 

Why is it that the most vulnerable in society are often the most significantly affected by conflict? What do we do when a young girl is raped by a soldier and left to be haunted by this abuse for the rest of her life? Where is justice for those whose only option is to run barefoot into the rainforest away from the military, making a daring journey across a raging river and into a foreign land with no guarantee of security? How do we comprehend the atrocities of children being murdered because they were born in one village and not another?

The crisis that Rohingya refugees have experienced shakes us to our core. We carry the stories of survivors, barely able to repeat the horrors they name. We acknowledge the hopelessness we see in the eyes of mothers and fathers who have lost countless loved ones. When a teenage girl says she can’t eat a meal without remembering her father and sister whom she lost, our hearts break. It is difficult to understand the sheer magnitude of human suffering.  

Life changed dramatically for over 700,000 Rohingya people in August 2017. Extreme violence, targeted at this ethnic minority group, forced families to flee across the border of Myanmar into Bangladesh.  They left their homes and all they knew with little more than the clothes on their backs and arrived to nothing.

For just over two years now, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have lived through all of this. They have asked these questions and wept for what has happened. Yet life for them has changed very little. Food is in short supply and levels of food insecurity are rising, not falling. This crisis will continue for years.

Refugee camps are overcrowded and lack the essentials, including proper sanitation. Because of this, the risk of disease outbreaks are enormous. There are few opportunities to work in the refugee camps, so most have no way to provide for themselves.

Nearly one million Rohingya people now live in a small corner of Bangladesh and are in ongoing need of humanitarian assistance.

Since the very start of the influx, World Renew has been involved, reaching over 370,000 people with urgently needed assistance.

Knowing the enormous needs, World Renew has made a commitment to stay. It will remain present in the Rohingya refugee camps for the next five years – funding permitting – helping some of the most vulnerable people in the world.  The goal of this work is to walk day-by-day with Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh, ensuring their families are healthy, safe, and living in peace.

World Renew is equally committed to supporting Bangladeshi families living in the same part of the country, where poverty levels were high even before the arrival of Rohingya refugees. The hope is that the influx of Rohingya refugees does not deepen the poverty of Bangladeshi communities.

On September 15^th we will return to Bangladesh for the third time.  Our efforts will be directed at providing assistance to two of World Renew’s partners to develop two longer term projects (funding permitting) for both the Rohingya refugee camps and the local communities.  Although somewhat dependent on the needs assessments, current thinking is that the projects will focus on targeting the nutrition needs of pregnant and lactating mothers, and babies and young children. 

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 “The crisis of the Rohingya people is difficult to imagine. Having sat with and heard stories from mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, my heart breaks for what they have lost. Yet with every story I hear, it is a reminder to me of why we are there:  to walk with and support those in need for the long term.”

—Jacqueline Koster, World Renew’s Associate Director of International Disaster Response 

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