Published on
Aug 12, 2018
Part 2 (See part 1 for more on privacy and protection)
What happens when a city the size of Dallas, Texas, springs up out of nowhere over the course of fewer than six months? The residents of this city arrive with only what they can carry as they flee from persecution and trauma in their home country. Suddenly, miles of trees and open hillside are settled by 700,000 people all in need of food, water, shelter, medical care, education, and anything else you can imagine.
Unfortunately, this scene is all too real. Right now hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees are settling into camps near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The international community has responded in full force. Hundreds of organizations are working to meet the health, protection, and shelter needs of this new sprawling city, but the magnitude of this crisis coupled with the needs of other protracted crises around the world is stretching aid workers and resources thin.
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And there’s another problem, one uncontrollable by human aid; Monsoon rains. Heavy rains, storms, and flooding are pounding the camps as I write this, and people are scrambling to reinforce shelters and help get households onto dry, safe ground. But even in structurally sound shelters above the water line, how can people keep their homes dry and clean to ward off the spread of parasitic infections from flowing, contaminated water? Only temporary solutions are allowed for what the Bangladesh government hopes is only a temporary situation, so concrete floors aren’t an option for most shelters, and tarps can’t keep the ground inside the shelter clean and dry.
Working closely with American Refugee Committee field staff and local partners, and based on our interviews with families living in the camps, we’ve created a thinner version of Emergency Floor to fit the specific needs of the rainy climate in Cox’s Bazar. It can be easily rolled out and secured in place to provide a dry, cleanable surface on which people can live and sleep. It can decrease the spread of disease and give families the basic dignity of a dry floor to live and sleep on while they do the hard work of rebuilding their lives in a new place.
Written by Nicole Iman for Every Shelter - 08.12.2018
