DAVID ADAMS speaks with Tim Costello, World Vision Australia’s chief advocate, about his recent visit to the world’s fasting growing refugee camp in south-eastern Bangladesh…
“I felt like I’d walked through the gates of hell.”
That’s how Tim Costello, chief advocate at World Vision Australia, characterises what he saw in the Cox’s Bazar district of south-east Bangladesh, home to the world’s fastest growing refugee camp. It has swollen with some 600,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar’s Rakhine state since late August, joining the 200,000 already sheltering there.
“I’ve been to the refugee camps out of Syria, in Lebanon, out of Mosul in Iraq, in South Sudan – this was the worst I’ve ever seen…” he says. “The conditions were appalling – far too little land for 600,000 people to live on, 40 degree heat, 100 per cent humidity with black plastic sheeting only – they were terrible conditions.”
Refugee girl, Somsida, 11, who fled violence in Rakhine State with her family: “In my dreams I see people running, crying, shouting and fighting and suddenly I get up in fear.” PICTURE: Via World Vision Australia
The crisis broke out in late August after conflict erupted in Rakhine state, sparking a crackdown by Myanmar’s security forces which has seen entire villages burned and tens of thousands of the Rohingya Muslim minority flee their homes in what the UN human rights chief, Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein, has said seemed like a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
Speaking to Sight hours after touching back down in Australia, Mr Costello says it’s the suddenness of the crisis which has exacerbated the problem.
“It’s the volume and the suddenness,” he says. “It’s the fastest growing refugee camp in the world – those 600,000 have arrived in the last six weeks and it’s the size of Canberra suddenly springing up in the poorest land…[There’s] far too little space because Bangladesh has 165 million people but it’s only half the size of my state, Victoria, which only has seven million people. So that’s what makes it terrible conditions.”
“I’ve been to the refugee camps out of Syria, in Lebanon, out of Mosul in Iraq, in South Sudan – this was the worst I’ve ever seen…”
– Tim Costello, chief advocate for World Vision Australia
And the people continue to arrive in the camp at the rate of up to 3,000 a day, often having walked for days to do so, crossing mountains and rivers and bringing with them the young and elderly, often in home-made barrows.
Mr Costello says that while aid agencies like World Vision are getting humanitarian help such as food and water to those in the camps, it’s the size and inaccessibility of the camps which makes it a difficult task.
More than 60 per cent of those in the camp are said to be children with an additional 1,200 to 1,800 arriving each day. World Vision, which is working to create safe spaces for children as well as women, says it’s already identified more than 1,500 unaccompanied and separated children.
Jamira, 26, who lives in neighborhood tents with two children says: “We are sleeping on the ground with our little children. The black polythene tent produces lots of heat. Our children are facing skin diseases and sometime vomiting. Beside these issues we don’t have women bathing place. We use wet towels to clean ourselves inside the tent.”
“Lots of malnourished kids; lots of graves of kids who got to safety from Rakhine state, Myanmar, and were buried…in tiny little plots; lots of orphan kids (whose) parents were killed – we saw a lot of that,” says Mr Costello.
International medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières reportedly said this week that children, some under 10 years old, were also receiving treatment for rape in the camps.
Mr Costello says World Vision was calling on Myanmar’s Government to give the Rohingya people rights.
“They were stateless. It’s terrifying when you’re stateless and even the state you’re in is hostile towards you – that’s the most terrifying position to be in…They’re now homeless, their villages are burnt, many women raped…The Bangladeshis understandably are saying ‘Well, we have a third of our population living on $US2 a day, we’re a poor nation, without space – they should go back’ and at the moment, [there’s] no agreement by the Myanmar Government to let them go back.”
The organisation is calling on Myanmar’s Government to allow international aid agencies to access conflict affected areas in Rakhine state, to protect the rights of all civilians – including aid workers – in their territory, to carry out security operations in accordance with international law and to permit refugees to return in safety and dignity.
The call comes as the UN Security Council reportedly weighs up a draft resolution put together by the UK and France which is aimed at addressing the violence that has caused the refugee situation as well as calling for Myanmar to not only allow humanitarian workers into Rakhine state but also UN rights investigators.
Mr Costello says there is “no question” greater international pressure need to be applied to resolve the situation.
“Leaving it as an internal matter for Myanmar actually means an external problem for Bangladesh. The world actually has to find a solution and the world is divided,” he says.
In light of the crisis and the growing scale of displacement around the world, World Vision has called on the Australian Government to lift its annual humanitarian intake of refugees to 42,000. But Mr Costello says that while Australia needs to be “generous” – the Federal Government has already announced $30 million in aid to address the Rohinga crisis, the situation is “not a problem Australia can solve”.
“It’s a terrible, no win, situation for the Rohingya at the moment.”
To donate to World Vision’s Myanmar-Bangladesh refugee crisis appeal, head here or call 13 32 40.
