In northern Rakhine, access to healthcare is almost non-existent. Health facilities are non-functional, having been damaged by the fighting, stripped of medical staff who fled violence, or left without supplies due to conflict dynamics and inability to gain authorisation to move supplies as needed.
In June, MSF was forced to indefinitely suspend our medical humanitarian activities in Buthidaung, Maungdaw and Rathedung townships, after our office and medical store were burnt down. Before this suspension, MSF witnessed attacks in highly populated civilian areas like markets and villages as well as attacks on healthcare facilities which threatened the lives of patients and healthcare workers.
Efforts, if any, taken by the warring parties to protect civilians and uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law are negligible.
The toll of this disregard for human life is immense. MSF teams in Bangladesh received 115 war wounded Rohingya patients in MSF facilities since July 2024 including men, women and children sustaining injuries from extreme violence. While newly arrived Rohingya people in Cox’s Bazar have managed to escape the conflict zone and access some level of medical care, they are forced to constantly hide for fear of deportation back to Myanmar while also facing an increasingly precarious situation in camps where 1.2 million people are living behind barbed wire fences.
Aside from rising violence and kidnapping in the camps, including for forced recruitment to armed groups in Myanmar, many people live in fear and anxiety about what they have experienced, and the fate of their families in Bangladesh and back home.
Having finally reached Bangladesh, Mojibullah has not yet found a reprieve from hardship.
“My family and I are struggling to come to terms with the loss of loved ones and the uncertainty of our future,” he says.
*Names have been changed.
Fonte original msf.org
