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DHAKA: Sexual harassment remains the most pressing concern for Rohingya women and adolescents living in squalid refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, according to a study released Sunday.
Cox’s Bazar is home to around a million largely Muslim Rohingya minority, fleeing a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
ActionAid – one of the largest non-profits operating in the camps since the influx in 2017 – conducted 66 in-depth interviews, revealing dire challenges faced by women and adolescents.
“Sexual harassment is the biggest concern,” said Tamazer Ahmed, policy, research and advocacy manager at ActionAid.
“Early marriage and polygamy have become normalized, and 93 percent of interviewees remained outside the scope of legal assistance.”
The participants said the violence was meted out not only by men known to their families but also members of the Armed Police Battalion (APBN) – a security force deployed by the Bangladesh government.
Ahmed said women in the camps described a shift in the nature of threats over the years, from lack of basic amenities in the early days to more systemic abuses now.
“Now, Rohingya women and adolescents often fall victim to molestation, rape, trafficking, poverty, educational exclusion, and even death,” Ahmed said.
Girls aged between 6 and 15 were particularly vulnerable, with most incidents of sexual harassment occurring near latrines and bathing points.
They were also vulnerable at distribution centers, hospitals, schools and madrassas, border zones and even within relatives’ homes.
“Patriarchy runs deep in the Rohingya community,” said Farah Kabir, executive director at ActionAid.
“But the views of the Rohingya women, mostly aged 16 to 30 years, were central to the research.”
The women surveyed urged authorities to improve lighting in public areas, replace APBN officers with army personnel, engage men in prevention efforts, and expand access to education and livelihoods.
Trust in law enforcement and religious leaders remained low, with many women saying they had almost nowhere to turn when facing abuse.
Kausar Sikdar, commanding officer of APBN, however said they were not aware of any such allegations against the force.
Bangladesh has recorded a surge of refugees from Myanmar since early 2024, with 150,000 more Rohingya arriving.

LONDON: The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, has criticized the leader of Britain’s populist Reform UK party, Nigel Farage, describing his plans for mass deportations of asylum seekers as an “isolationist, short-term, knee-jerk” response.
Cottrell, the Church of England’s second most senior clergyman who is performing some functions of the Archbishop of Canterbury while a new head of the Church is selected, told Sky News that Brexit veteran Farage was “not offering any long-term solution to the big issues which are convulsing our world.”
He said in an pre-recorded interview aired on Sunday that people should “actively resist the kind of isolationist, short-term, knee-jerk ... send them home” policies.
In response, Reform UK’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, said “the role of the Archbishop is not actually to interfere with international migration policy that is determined by the government.”
Cottrell’s criticism is the latest in a growing row in Britain over how to deal with the large numbers of asylum seekers arriving in boats, an issue which has seen weeks of summer protests outside hotels where some of them are housed.
The Labour government says it is tackling a problem left by earlier, Conservative administrations by trying to process asylum claims more quickly and brokering return deals with other nations, but is under growing pressure to act fast.
Reform UK, which has a commanding lead in opinion polls before an election expected to take place in 2029, took the initiative to lead on the issue last week when Farage unveiled his party’s plans to remove asylum seekers by repealing or disapplying treaties used to block forced deportations.
Cottrell said those plans did little to address the main issue of why asylum seekers wanted to travel to Britain, and “so if you think that’s the answer you will discover, in due course, that all you have done is made the problem worse.”