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Asia

Bangladesh

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FRAGILITY RANKING

41st out of 180 countries

Project status Closed

Overview

By most indicators, Bangladesh is on track to overcome aspects of its own fragility. However, the country’s path towards sustainable development is not without its challenges – including frequent natural disasters, gender inequality, and hostilities between host communities and refugees, whose numbers continue to rise after the large influx since August 2017. To date, nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees have moved across the border into Cox’s Bazar district after fleeing persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. The sheer scale of the Rohingya refugee protracted crisis threatens to reverse the country’s development gains, plunging Rohingya refugees and the surrounding Bangladeshi communities into extreme poverty.

As a low-lying country along the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh is at the forefront of the climate crisis and is routinely ravaged by heavy monsoon rains, landslides, and tropical cyclones. Yet, despite these attempts to derail the country’s progress, Bangladesh has made major strides towards development and poverty reduction since the country became independent in 1971.

However, pockets of fragility continue to exist throughout the country. Nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees are living in dire conditions in Cox’s Bazar District camps (Ukhiya and Teknaf), the world’s largest refugee camps. Overcrowding in the densely populated camps puts residents at greater risk for disease, crime, gender-based violence (GBV), risk of exploitation and abuse, and human trafficking especially for children, women and people with disabilities. These settlements, which are clustered along Bangladesh’s coastline, are also prone to natural disasters such as floods during Bangladesh’s monsoon season (June-October), and massive fires during dry season (November-March).

Despite the considerable number of international aid organizations and local nonprofits responding to the crisis, the needs of both the Rohingya refugees and the Bangladeshi host communities remain vast.

Relief International is not currently active in Bangladesh, but between 2004 and 2023, our programs tackled widespread poverty at a time when Bangladesh’s economic growth had fallen to historic lows. Our programs and teams were focused on rebuilding livelihoods in the Sundarban Mangrove Zone, an ecologically critical region, as well as supporting communities in over 20 districts across southwestern and northern Bangladesh to ensure gender rights, access to health care and education, and to combat unsafe migration and human trafficking.

In the wake of the Rohingya crisis, between 2017 and 2023 we expanded our programs to meet the most urgent needs of refugees and surrounding Bangladeshi host communities.

Our work applied a community-driven approach, bridging gaps in access to essential services and building resilience within target communities and populations in Cox’s Bazar:

  • Providing high-quality healthcare services (Including COVID-19, MHPSS and Nutrition services) to Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar District refugee camps and to members of the neighboring Bangladeshi host communities.
  • Training Rohingya and Host Community Health Workers to detect outbreaks of disease in their communities before these cases spread and reach our clinics.
  • Preventing, mitigating, and responding to gender-based violence, with 11 dedicated spaces that have programming for women, girls, men and boys to encourage a life free of violence.
  • Encouraging the protection and safety of children in the camps’ area, through a variety of programming for children in our 18 multi-purpose centres
  • Working with local farmers’ groups to improve their production techniques, to increase yields, and to establish market linkages between farmers, retailers, and the refugees in the camps.
  • Setting up youth development centres in the district that provide IT training, job skills training, and connections with local employers for unemployed youth, to foster social cohesion, and create sustainable, market-oriented livelihood opportunities.
  • Delivering health and protection services and critical supplies of water, shelter, and hygiene kits in the event of emergencies such as landslides, monsoons, floods, fires and cyclones.
  • Strengthening disaster management planning, technical capacity, and public awareness on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and emergency preparedness. Along with enhancing risk management capacity and supporting immediate risk mitigation of water-borne disease through improved access to clean and safe water, hygiene promotion, and distribution of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) Non-Food Items (NFIs).
  • Promoting a sense of place and connection to bring the community together to understand and address environmental issues adversely affecting the mangrove forest in southwestern Bangladesh.

Our 2023 Impact in Bangladesh
21K
healthcare consultations provided
123K
people trained on improving phsyical and mental health
78
protection facilities and safe spaces supported

Stories From Bangladesh

Learn more about our previous work in Bangladesh from our staff and program participants.

Cyclone Mocha Impacts Rohingya And Host Communities In Bangladesh And Myanmar

READ MORE

Bangladesh

Improving Nutrition in Refugee Camps in Bangladesh

Asia and Mohammed are Community Nutrition Volunteers in the Rohingya refugee Camps in Cox’s Bazar. Refugees themselves, both are committed to supporting families in their community however they can.

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Bangladesh

Empowering Women in the Rohingya Refugee Camps, Bangladesh

In Bangladesh’s refugee camps, communities are working together to empower women and reduce gender-based violence – through the creation of Safe Spaces for women and girls, and gender transformative training for men and boys.

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Bangladesh

Refugees Powering RI Programs in Bangladesh’s Refugee Camps

Rohmot and Hasina are Rohingya refugees. They are also RI volunteers, helping to deliver RI’s much needed programs in Bangladesh’s refugee camps.

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Bangladesh

“Climate Change is the biggest challenge we are currently facing”

Rehana supports her family of 6 based on what she can grows and sell. Unfortunately, climate change is impacting how much food she can produce.

 

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Bangladesh

New center for young people opens in Ukhiya, Bangladesh

This month a new resource center has opened to give young people a place where they can share their ideas and experiences about finding work, and access training and support.

 

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Bangladesh

“I was so happy to see the staff take care of my baby as if he were their own”

Safely delivered during COVID-19

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Bangladesh

Cox’s Bazar: Stories of Recovery and Resilience from a COVID-19 Ward

Since the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic, Relief International’s team on the ground have been preparing for the virus’s eventual arrival in Cox’s Bazar. We began ramping up our response months before the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in mid-May.

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Bangladesh

Two Years Later: The Rohingya Refugee Crisis Continues

Relief International’s programs continue to support the diverse needs of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees living in vulnerable situations in Bangladesh.

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Bangladesh

Rohingya Crisis: “I’ve never shared my story before.”

Inside Relief International’s Women & Girl Friendly Spaces in Kutupalong refugee camp, roughly 100 women gather each day to escape the realities of life inside the camp.

 

 

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RS17776_Rohingya-refugees-in-Bangladesh-1.jpg

Cyclone Mocha Impacts Rohingya And Host Communities In Bangladesh And Myanmar

Mohammed-and-Asia-Nutrition-Bangladesh.jpg

Bangladesh

Improving Nutrition in Refugee Camps in Bangladesh

RI-IMG-30-1.jpg

Bangladesh

Empowering Women in the Rohingya Refugee Camps, Bangladesh

IMG_1233.jpg

Bangladesh

Refugees Powering RI Programs in Bangladesh’s Refugee Camps

Copy-of-Copy-of-Bangladesh-Climate-Campaign-3.png

Bangladesh

“Climate Change is the biggest challenge we are currently facing”

The-youth-Mariam-Akter-is-sharing-her-thought-during-the-opening-event.jpg

Bangladesh

New center for young people opens in Ukhiya, Bangladesh

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Bangladesh

“I was so happy to see the staff take care of my baby as if he were their own”

hero-bangladesh-covid19-07092020.jpg

Bangladesh

Cox’s Bazar: Stories of Recovery and Resilience from a COVID-19 Ward

Bangladesh. Rachel Elkind/RI

Bangladesh

Two Years Later: The Rohingya Refugee Crisis Continues

Bangladesh. Rachel Elkind/RI

Bangladesh

Rohingya Crisis: “I’ve never shared my story before.”

RS17776_Rohingya-refugees-in-Bangladesh-1.jpg
Mohammed-and-Asia-Nutrition-Bangladesh.jpg
RI-IMG-30-1.jpg
IMG_1233.jpg
Copy-of-Copy-of-Bangladesh-Climate-Campaign-3.png
The-youth-Mariam-Akter-is-sharing-her-thought-during-the-opening-event.jpg
copy-of-baby-website-e1621450392242.png
hero-bangladesh-covid19-07092020.jpg
Bangladesh. Rachel Elkind/RI
Bangladesh. Rachel Elkind/RI
RS17776_Rohingya-refugees-in-Bangladesh-1.jpg

Cyclone Mocha Impacts Rohingya And Host Communities In Bangladesh And Myanmar

Mohammed-and-Asia-Nutrition-Bangladesh.jpg

Improving Nutrition in Refugee Camps in Bangladesh

RI-IMG-30-1.jpg

Empowering Women in the Rohingya Refugee Camps, Bangladesh

IMG_1233.jpg

Refugees Powering RI Programs in Bangladesh’s Refugee Camps

Copy-of-Copy-of-Bangladesh-Climate-Campaign-3.png

“Climate Change is the biggest challenge we are currently facing”

The-youth-Mariam-Akter-is-sharing-her-thought-during-the-opening-event.jpg

New center for young people opens in Ukhiya, Bangladesh

copy-of-baby-website-e1621450392242.png

“I was so happy to see the staff take care of my baby as if he were their own”

hero-bangladesh-covid19-07092020.jpg

Cox’s Bazar: Stories of Recovery and Resilience from a COVID-19 Ward

Bangladesh. Rachel Elkind/RI

Two Years Later: The Rohingya Refugee Crisis Continues

Bangladesh. Rachel Elkind/RI

Rohingya Crisis: “I’ve never shared my story before.”

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Bangladesh. Rachel Elkind/RI