Rohingya deaths in landslides call for a reckoning with systemic failures

This year’s monsoon season has already turned deadly. In just four days through Thursday, at least 30 people died in landslides triggered by heavy rainfall in five districts under Chattogram division. And among them were at least 13 Rohingyas, most of them children, who lost their lives in the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar. Given the longstanding vulnerability of these settlements and surrounding areas, further casualties seem all but inevitable without urgent interventions.

The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh live in conditions of extreme destitution and hardship that can truly be understood only by those living in the camps. A lack of access to information, a language barrier, and the crushing weight of unequal power dynamics compound their vulnerability as a displaced community. Although globally sentiment is increasingly turning against refugees, Bangladesh can continue to lead with the empathy and generosity that have characterised our response towards them for decades. At the same time, we must be vigilant in upholding their right to live safely and with dignity. If the latest catastrophe is a result of systemic mismanagement and negligence, silence will only empower those responsible and exacerbate the crisis through a spillover effect in the host communities.

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Most of the refugees reside in areas of Cox’s Bazar that were once dense forests. Due to massive human intervention over the years, the natural resilience and protective ecosystems in Ukhiya and Teknaf have been depleted, a degradation further worsened by ongoing hill cutting, deforestation, and concretisation. Landslides have thus become predictable during the monsoon, especially in the hazard-prone areas where Rohingya refugees are forced to live in high density. Furthermore, there is no way to downplay the negligence involved in allowing a girls’ madrasa to operate at the base of a hillside during heavy monsoon rains, where on Wednesday, seven children and one teacher were killed and many others were trapped following a landslide—a tragedy that was entirely foreseeable given that at least eight people had already died in a similar landslide in the same vicinity just two days earlier. Were the parents properly informed of the risks before sending their children to that madrasa? Was the facility manager warned of the danger of operating in a high-risk zone during heavy rainfall?

Camp administrations, under the authority of the Office of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC) in Cox’s Bazar, have led camp management for years. The responsible national and international NGOs possess decades of experience in navigating critical displacement settings worldwide. Given this, and for the sake of their own institutional integrity, a thorough investigation into these fatal incidents is warranted. We must ensure that these tragic deaths don’t go in vain and never occur again. Those responsible for the refugee response must now identify the fault line in their efforts. Despite having a comprehensive camp coordination and camp management (CCCM) model, early warning systems in place, dedicated community mobilisers on the ground, and routine information-sharing mechanisms, the system failed.

Our habit of making excuses often closes the door to accountability, and that must not happen here. In donor-driven refugee operations, the needs of protracted displaced populations may lose priority as international attention shifts to new conflicts elsewhere. Therefore, if responsible actors claim that preventable deaths from recent landslides are solely the result of a funding crisis, we must question the integrity of the entire policy-making process. Given the sensitivity of this issue, part of the blame for any failure in Rohingya refugee operations may be pinned on Bangladesh itself. So we must ask whether, having vast experience in dealing with such displacement settings in different parts of the world, the United Nations properly briefed Bangladesh on potential scenarios. Or did policymakers simply fail to envision the reality of the situation? Seeking answers to these questions will not only serve to document vital lessons learnt but will also help prevent further damage to both Bangladesh and the Rohingya community currently residing in Teknaf and Ukhiya upazilas.

It is also true that securing sufficient funding does not automatically ensure that money is used properly and judiciously, as we have already learnt from a recently published New Age report about prevailing loopholes in UNHCR’s systems, highlighting significant mismanagement, irregularities, and the misuse of aid funds across various projects in the camp. We cannot simply assume that Bangladesh is unaffected by this mismanagement; rather, we must demand to know what checks and balances are being implemented to guarantee that such irregularities do not recur and that loopholes in aid disbursement do not spawn further institutional corruption in Bangladesh.

Following the July uprising in 2024 and the transition to a new elected government in February 2026, we must demand a comprehensive review of all policy-level actions, including the relocation of refugees to Bhasan Char. Research published last year indicated that per capita service delivery in Bhasan Char is approximately three times more expensive than in Cox’s Bazar, driven by the island’s geographic isolation, lack of market access, and the need for entirely standalone infrastructure. So, it is high time to investigate why a failed policy continues to be pursued in the new reality of severe funding constraints.

The protracted refugee situation in Bangladesh, which is about to enter its ninth year, definitely requires a transition from an emergency stance to a more predictable, structured approach. While high-level discussions frequently emphasise traditional pathways like repatriation or resettlement, ensuring the immediate, everyday safety of those residing in these camps remains a critical challenge because these dense, informal settlements are located in an active climate hotspot, and climate change can no longer be viewed as a peripheral environmental issue; rather, it is now a major driver of refugee protection risks. However, despite the inclusion of climate change and disaster management in successive yearly planning, operational realities are often slowed by administrative inertia, leaving sector-level resource allocation and comprehensive accounting short of what is actually required on the ground.

Unfortunately, rather than being deeply integrated across sectors, environmental safeguarding attempts are sometimes treated as mere administrative compliance exercises, or perceived as superficial gestures. And fragmented approaches across sectors sometimes result in localised projects that lack long-term operation, maintenance, or clear exit strategies. Therefore, moving from vulnerabilities such as landslides, heatwaves, and flash floods towards genuine resilience will require a comprehensive climate action plan backed by a functional monitoring, evaluation and learning framework. Because these camps occupy the fragile Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf peninsula, camp-level planning must align seamlessly with national climate policy. The Bangladesh government must continue to lead by reinforcing land-use zoning and ensuring that every humanitarian intervention includes a transparent operation, maintenance, and exit plan.

UN agencies and allied NGOs must also move past temporary catchphrases to embrace total data transparency and actively utilise local, area-based knowledge to establish a system of shared accountability. Meanwhile, the international community must uphold its obligations through meaningful responsibility-sharing, providing reliable financial resources, technology transfer, and dedicated disaster risk financing. To avoid further monsoon-related catastrophes, stakeholders must abandon top-down approaches; decision-making and implementation must instead be rooted in grassroots experience. We must prioritise local expertise in resilience and adaptation rather than imposing foreign-led projects that often fail to account for the lived realities of both the Rohingya refugees and the host communities.

Md Ehsanul Hoque is an environment and ecosystem management expert. He can be reached at ehsandev@gmail.com.
Mowdud Rahman is an engineer and researcher. He can be reached at mowdudur@gmail.com.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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