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Read caption August, 2018: A man carries firewood in the outskirts of the mega camp hosting almost 900,000 Rohingya refugees in the Cox's Bazar area of Bangladesh. Work is ongoing to expand the camp and move refugees from unsafe, hilly areas prone to landslides to safer areas. Photo: Ingebjørg Kårstad/Norwegian Refugee Council.

NRC in Bangladesh

NRC Bangladesh|Published 04. Mar 2019
Bangladesh
Between August 2017 and December 2018, over 700,000 people fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh. They joined over 200,000 Rohingya already living in Cox’s Bazar, displaced by earlier waves of violence in Rakhine.

Facts

A total of

930

people in need received our assistance in 2018.

Bangladesh |

NRC Bangladesh | Fact Sheet

Between August 2017 and December 2018, over 700,000 people fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh. They joined over 200,000 Rohingya already living in Cox’s Bazar, displaced by earlier waves of violence in Rakhine.

 
Humanitarian overview 

Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in the world. Close to one million Bangladeshis had to flee from natural disasters in 2017. The same year, a sudden increase in extreme violence in neighbouring Myanmar’s Rakhine state led to the influx of primarily Rohingya refugees. Over 700,000 people fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh between August 2017 and December 2018. They joined over 200,000 Rohingya already living in Cox’s Bazar, displaced by earlier waves of violence in Rakhine. 

In 2018, booming Bangladesh fulfilled the requirements to graduate from its UN classification status of Least Developed Country (LDC) by 2024. However, with 15 per cent of the population undernourished, and an infant mortality rate of 34 per cent, the country remains among the 47 least developed countries in the world. Despite these substantial challenges, Bangladesh hosts significantnumbers of both internally displaced people and refugees.
 

​NRC’s operation 

We carried out our first activities in Bangladesh in 2016, through a partnership with a local NGO, RDRS, in northern Bangladesh. Since the Rohingya refugee influx of late 2017, we have scaled up our presence in Bangladesh, working with different partners to provide assistance to refugees and local communities.  

We became a legal entity in Bangladesh in November 2018, and will scale up the country operation in terms of staffing and activities within education, information, counselling and legal assistance (ICLA), and site management in 2019.
 

NRC EducationEducation

 
We work with partners to provide children and youth with quality education through: 

  • teacher trainings on psychosocial support, health and hygiene, and disaster risk management that support the wellbeing and safety of children 
  • life skills sessions that help youth and adolescents avoid threats and reduce their protection risks 
  • vocational training and entrepreneurial start-up grants to help youth generate income for themselves and their families
     

NRC Information, counselling and legal assistance (ICLA)Information, counselling and legal assistance (ICLA)

NRC Camp managementCamp management

NRC Bangladesh is grateful for the generous support from our donors:

 

  • Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (NMFA)
  • Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)

Contact info

Country Director

​Unni Lange

Phone

E-mail

info@nrc.no