In Photos: Refugees Expand Camps Around Cox’s Bazar

This week, UN human rights officials said it was likely that crimes committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar had violated international law. Earlier, the UN described the military offensive against them as a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’. Myanmar’s government says it has not targeted civilians, just people it believes are militants

Rabeya Akter, 33, has just been to the doctors to get medicine for her daughter’s cough. She fled Myanmar with her husband, five children and mother-in-law. Her husband now teaches in a camp madrasa. She looks after the family, although she would like to work. ‘[Then] I can earn some money to help our family,’ she says. Her 15-year-old son is too old for school, but hasn’t got a job. Akter says the family is ‘looking for a man’ to marry her eldest daughter, who is 18. She wants to go back to Myanmar so her children get a proper education and good jobs. ‘It’s my dream’

There are now 20 camps near Cox’s Bazar that are home to Rohingya refugees. They expand daily as more people cross the border from Myanmar. Most have built their own shelters from tarpaulin, and bamboo stripped from the nearby forests. NGOs are warning of a catastrophe when the cyclone season starts later this month. Many shelters are precariously built on slopes and there are fears that lives will be lost in landslides