Natalia Torrent Martinex
Thousands of Rohingya persecuted in the squalid Cox's Bazar camps are under additional stress as their hopes of returning to their homeland in Myanmar rapidly fade, according to Bangladesh National Representative Natalia Torrent Martinex of Medicine Sans Frontiers.
Almost all Rohingya wanted to return to their Rakhine state from which they fled five years ago, Natalia said.
"But they don't see a solution around the corner," he said while pointing to negligible progress on his repatriation during an interview with New Age at his office in Dhaka on December 1.
The Rohingya don't know how many more years it will take to return to their homeland, Natalia said.
"The feeling of 'I don't know how long I'm going to be here' brings additional layers of stress to them," he said of the hopelessness of the Muslim ethnic minority forcibly displaced from Myanmar's Buddhist majority.
Since 1978, the Rohingya have taken refuge in Bangladesh while fleeing violence led by the Myanmar military.
The latest violence, which began in August 2017, has sparked an unprecedented exodus, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to live in deteriorating camps in Cox's Bazar, more than 250 kilometers from Rakhine.
Some 8,60,000 Rohingya have been living in an area of โโ26 square kilometers for the past five years, in what the UN has described as one of the worst human rights and humanitarian crises in the world.
In addition, restrictions on their movement to the rest of Bangladesh give the Rohingya an additional burden and anxiety, said the MSF representative in the country.
The sense of hopelessness is also affecting the mental health of the Rohingya, he said.
MSF has been working directly for the displaced Rohingya since 2009, when the Kutupalong field hospital was established in Cox's Bazar to serve both the Rohingya and the local community.
In August 2017, the France-based international humanitarian medical NGO expanded its activities for the Rohingya in Cox's Bazar and now operates nine health centers for the camps, including three hospitals, three primary health centers and two specialty clinics.
Among many medical services, MSF provides psychological services to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence at its facilities in Cox's Bazar.
Natalia said that many Rohingya women who were abused by the Myanmar military tried to forget their trauma after receiving medical care from MSF.
"The women in our clinics now don't talk about the past, that is, what happened to them in Myanmar," she said.
MSF also runs a program in Kamrangirchar in Dhaka to help survivors of sexual and gender-based violence.
Natalia said they were encountering a growing number of incidents of gender-based violence not only in the camps but also outside the camps in Cox's Bazar and in Kamrangirchar.
He said they also found that many of the perpetrators were people close to the victims.
"Let's be honest, we know that most of these things happen in the family or in the community," he said.
In Bangladesh, most victims of gender-based violence told MSF that they did not disclose the incident for the sake of family reputations.
Many said they were afraid of what might happen to them next, as the perpetrators were all around them.
Although the physical consequences for victims can be addressed if they report it within 72 hours of the incident, the mental consequences are very difficult to address, Natalia noted.
According to the head of MSF in Bangladesh, violence against women in the camps, whether in Syria, the Congo or Lesbos, is common, as the condition there often leads people to commit crimes against the most part. weak of a community, mostly women and children.
Natalia observed that gender-based violence can only be stopped by making a better contribution to society to generate changes in behavior.
The Covid pandemic has also raised the rate of violence against women almost everywhere in the world, it further said.
The Covid situation has increased anxiety in multiple ways ... everyone is suffering sadly, he added.
MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders in English, is celebrating 50 years of its existence in 2021 after starting its operation in 1971.
The first program that MSF undertook in Bangladesh was in 1972, just after the country's independence from Pakistan after a nine-month war and bloodshed.
Currently, MSF has around 2,000 employees in Bangladesh, mostly healthcare providers such as doctors and nurses, to run its programs.
Natalia Torrent Martinex expressed her satisfaction with the training facilities of the organization that works for the locals.
He said his instructors were always preferred by government-run health programs.
