Refugee Camps at Landslide Risk

What is it about?

This chapter presents the qualitative study of Rohingya camps that explores mitigation measures for reducing landslide risks and their consequences. Empirical data collected from document review, semi-structured interviews, transect walks, and non-participant observations allowed to understand the process of applying the ‘low-tech bioengineering’ method or a more nature-based resilient method that requires to construct protected terraces along with drainage channels and plantations while maintaining the temporal nature of the built environment. This method, along with practicing non-structural measures such as forecasting, warning, evacuation, and relocation is identified as cost-effective and appropriate to maintain the non-permanent nature since the government directives advise not to build permanent structures, considering the political and ecological context. The positive reactions of the majority of the camp dwellers toward these measures are a testimony of their success which can contribute to the global knowledge of humanitarian crisis management.

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Why is it important?

Displacement of an ethnic community from its native place due to humanitarian crisis forces them to cross international borders and seek asylum as refugees or stateless persons. Their temporal accommodations as camps are often built on risky or unsafe locations, where they live in bare minimum conditions, expecting to repatriate. A huge number of Rohingyas from Myanmar, being victims of the humanitarian crisis, crossed the international border and are residing in several camps, established in Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh, where several locations are prone to landslides, along with heavy rainfall and flash floods.