As humanitarian agencies in Bangladesh race against the clock to prepare one of the world’s largest refugee camps for the onslaught of the upcoming monsoon season, they are calling for more support from international donors such as Canada to scale up their lifesaving work.

The United Nation’s International Organization for Migration estimates that at least 150,000 Rohingya in the community of Cox’s Bazar face life-threatening risks from landslides and floods, and thousands more are at risk of disease and being cut off from assistance.

The United Nations’ joint response plan launched last month calls for $951 million US to assist 1.3 million people, including 884,000 Rohingya refugees and 336,000 host community members.

The UN says it needs urgent funding to meet life-saving and acute humanitarian needs of refugees as well as affected host communities.

David Morley, president and CEO of UNICEF Canada, said the situation in the camps and in the host communities is extremely serious.

“It’s a horrific situation and Canada has a chance to lead,” Morley said in a phone interview from Dhaka, following his visit to the Cox’s Bazar area near the border with Myanmar.

(click to listen to the full interview with David Morley)

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Vulnerable to landslides

A Rohingya refugee boy carries water in the Kutupalong refugee camp, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh March 22, 2018. (Mohammad Ponir Hossain/REUTERS)

Usually, humanitarian agencies prefer to set up camps in relatively flat places but the camps around Cox’s Bazar have sprung up on a hilly terrain that is prone to landslides and flash floods, Morley said.

“We know that over the next few weeks the monsoon rain will come so we’re very fearful that that’s going to be another disaster,” Morley said.

Humanitarian agencies helping Rohingyas brace for devastating monsoon rains

The money raised by the appeal will go to respond to food and nutrition needs, water and sanitation, and health and various other sectors, said Dipayan Bhattacharyya, the World Food Programme’s Deputy Country Director in Bangladesh, who was in Ottawa earlier this week for meetings with Global Affairs Canada officials.

Bhattacharyya said the densely populated Kutupalong refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, which has become the fourth largest city in Bangladesh, is particularly vulnerable to landslides, flooding and hurricane-strength winds brought by tropical cyclones.

(click to listen to the full interview with Dipayan Bhattacharyya)

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'Devoid of any vegetation' and densely populated

Rohingya refugee children fly improvised kites at the Kutupalong camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on December 10, 2017. (Damir Sagolj/REUTERS)

The camp has about 680,000 people crammed into an area of about 14 square kilometres, giving it a population density of about 50,000 per square kilometre, Bhattacharyya said.

For comparison, Ottawa has a population density of about 400 people per square kilometre.

“Just imagine 400 per square kilometre in Ottawa and 50,000 per square kilometre in this Kutupalong mega-camp,” Bhattacharyya said.

“This entire area is devoid of any vegetation, it’s an undulating surface, so essentially this soil, which is, essentially, completely exposed and any normal rainfall can already cause a very difficult situation there.”

The area around Cox’s Bazar receives pretty high levels of rainfall during monsoon season, Bhattacharyya said. In addition, in the pre-monsoon months in April and May and the post-monsoon period in October and November, the area gets battered by tropical cyclones, he added.

Working to reinforce the camp

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