Myanmar refugee crisis

“They came with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. They have nowhere else to go.”

Myanmar Refugee Crisis Appeal

Fleeing from violence in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State, more than 500,000 refugees have already crossed the border to Bangladesh. These people are destitute – and their situation is worsening by the minute, says CARE’s Zia Choudhury, who is with our emergency team in Cox’s Bazar near the border. He says:

Families are sleeping in fields and on muddy paths. People are in desperate need of clean drinking water, food, medical help and a safe place to sleep.

Working with a local NGO partner, we have started immediate relief activities, including distributing food to families in need. We are also supporting a health clinic assessing and treating children suffering from acute malnutrition.

Families fleeing from violence have arrived with nothing: no shelter, no food, no belongings.

Huge numbers of people are crowded into makeshift shelters in temporary refugee settlements, in an area already devastated by flooding and with ongoing rains making the situation even worse. CARE’s Zia Choudhury says:

People will need to build more stable shelter as soon as possible. They will need strong tarpaulin, bamboo and rope to remain safe during the rains.

As well as shelter, people badly need health services. Nearly 100,000 refugees including children are currently suffering from fever and diarrhoeal diseases. Children are complaining about cold and skin diseases as well. On top of that, people do not have proper access to sanitation facilities and safe drinking water, which poses a major health risk for refugees. We are also concerned about the risks – particularly for women and girls – of further violence, including gender-based violence.

CARE is hiring more staff and working with local authorities and partners to meet the needs of refugees. But the scale of this crisis means that much more help is needed.

Please donate now so we can bring life-saving help to desperate women, children and families.

The crisis in brief

An escalation of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in late August led to vast numbers of people fleeing across the border into Bangladesh in a desperate search for safety. Most of the refugees are women, children and small babies.

More than 500,000 people are staying in makeshift settlements or camps, or just wherever they can find space: many are still sleeping in fields or on muddy paths.

Most are reliant on humanitarian assistance to meet their basic daily needs. More than 400,000 people require support to meet their food needs, while an estimated 125,000 pregnant and lactating women and children under 5 will need supplementary feeding.

The area they are fleeing to, in southeast Bangladesh, has already been hard hit by the devastating floods that have affected millions of people across South Asia in recent months.

The government of Bangladesh and local authorities are working hard to meet the needs of the refugees. Local Bangladeshi families, with few resources themselves, are taking in the refugees and have been supporting them however they can. CARE is on the ground right now, responding to the emergency.

But the level of need is immense, and more help is urgently needed.

CARE’s response

CARE Bangladesh’s emergency team has been distributing cooked food to people in Cox’s Bazar district, where most refugees have sought shelter. We are also supporting a health clinic (funded by UNICEF) treating children with acute malnutrition in Unchiprang refugee camp. We are working closely with local authorities and local and international partners to scale up our response in the areas of food and nutrition, shelter, health, gender-based violence support and protection, water, sanitation and hygiene, and camp management.

CARE has been working in Bangladesh’s southeast region (including Cox’s Bazar) for 10 years. In addition to our long-term development programmes focusing on women’s empowerment, in the last five years our emergency response teams have supported more than 90,000 disaster-affected households in the region with food, household items, shelter, emergency cash support, and water, sanitation and hygiene support.

Please donate and send real help now to refugee families in Bangladesh.

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