Cox’s Bazar: The largest refugee camp in the world
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Far from Europe’s attention lies a refugee camp much larger than the camps we have in Europe. Equally, the 900,000 refugees in the Cox’s Bazar camp in Bangladesh receive little attention. A refugee disaster worse than we can imagine. In the camp are refugees from Myanmar, there are the Rohingya people, a Muslim ethnic group in Myanmar has been displaced and killed in something reminiscent of a genocide.
Criminal Court in The Hague
There are now ongoing cases in the International Criminal Court in The Hague where individuals are accused of genocide against the Rohingya people. Soldiers confess what they have been a part of. The explanations given to them have been orders to kill everything they came across. They describe the murder of young people, the beheading of the elderly and the rape of girls before they were killed.
Those who survived fled across the border into Bangladesh. There they now live in the world’s largest refugee camp. The refugees do not have the right to work or go to school and conditions in the camp are critical.
Why is the Cox’s Bazar camp not getting attention?
Yes, we hear a bit about this camp from time to time and we heard a couple of years ago a lot about the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar. But there is strikingly little compared to what we hear and read about refugees in Greece these days.
I do not pit refugees against each other and I think that Norway can take in more than 50 refugees from the Moria camp.
But it is striking that we have a great commitment to refugees who are in our immediate areas, while we almost turn a blind eye to refugees in Africa and the Cox’s Bazar camp.
Aid organizations are of course present in Cox’s Bazar and other camps. This applies to both the Norwegian Refugee Council and Doctors Without Borders. They do great work, but work that receives little attention.
I miss an international plan for all the world’s refugees. A plan which means that the people who live in the camps can have good and safe lives and that children can grow up in a safe environment.