{"id":2026,"date":"2018-08-22T17:10:04","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T17:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.translatorswithoutborders.org\/blog\/?p=2026"},"modified":"2024-08-22T14:29:47","modified_gmt":"2024-08-22T14:29:47","slug":"board-chair-visits-bangladesh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/translatorswithoutborders.org\/blog\/board-chair-visits-bangladesh\/","title":{"rendered":"Report from the Field"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our Board Chair visits Bangladesh, sees progress and challenges first hand<\/span><\/h1>\n

I recently visited Bangladesh with Ellie Kemp, our Head of Crisis Response, to see first hand the work of Translators without Borders (TWB) around the Rohingya crisis. Our trip included a visit to the \u201cmegacamp\u201d at Kutupalong, the biggest refugee camp in the world, and meetings with our partner humanitarian response teams based in Cox\u2019s Bazar. We also spent a few days in Dhaka meeting with donors and partner organizations.  <\/span><\/p>\n

The crisis is an incredibly challenging one. One year ago this month<\/a>, the Myanmar army escalated a long-standing campaign of persecution against the largely Muslim Rohingya to what the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has characterized as ethnic cleansing. Thousands were killed in Myanmar, and over 700,000 fled over the Naf river to Bangladesh; at the peak, 20,000 refugees arrived per day. The Myanmar government refuses to recognize the Rohingya as citizens, claiming they are Bangladeshi migrants. The Bangladeshi government, although generously offering them sanctuary, is facing its own political challenges and does not recognize them as refugees either. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Rohingya people therefore are denied the right to work and not allowed to register as residents, and cannot build more permanent homes than the bamboo and tarpaulin shelters they have been in for the last 12 months. Formal schooling is not allowed in the camps;  people in camps are even officially forbidden from owning mobile phones. On top of this the humanitarian response has been suffering from poor coordination due to unclear division of responsibilities. Unfortunately these challenges have been acutely felt in the way the responding organizations have communicated with the communities they are trying to help. <\/span><\/p>\n

This response was supposed to be different. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There has been increasing awareness over the last few years of the need to improve programs for communicating with communities (CwC) and to build these programs into every response. This was one of the first major responses since the World Humanitarian Summit \u201cGrand Bargain\u201d signed two years ago in Istanbul, where the humanitarian community committed itself to doing this better. Unfortunately it has not quite played out that way. Too often, key roles in CwC are left vacant or not given the resources they need. Key initiatives, such as refugee registration (a sensitive topic for a systematically persecuted population), have been handled without proper planning of how to communicate. And while some major donors, such as the UK\u2019s DFID and the EU\u2019s ECHO now recognize the problem with inadequate funding for CwC, the funding provision still remains far below the need. Our task on advocacy around the need for mainstreaming CwC continues\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Andrew
Andrew Bredenkamp at Kutupalong camp, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From a linguistic perspective the situation is complex<\/a> too.<\/strong> Rohingya is not a written language, and the thousands of Rohingya in the camps who have received an education were taught in Burmese. Rohingya is related to Chittagonian, the local language spoken in Cox\u2019s Bazar and more distantly Bangla, the national language of Bangladesh. Unfortunately this has sometimes led to responders assuming that Chittagonian and Rohingya are basically the same language. We heard the statement repeatedly that \u201cChittagonian and Rohingya are 70 percent the same, so we\u2019re using Chittagonian speakers\u201d. Bearing in mind Spanish and Italian are 80 percent similar and that no one would consider using Italian to communicate with a Spanish community, this highlights the need for continued awareness about language issues among responders. <\/span><\/p>\n

This is not an academic discussion. <\/span><\/h3>\n

The words for \u201chelp,\u201d \u201cpain,\u201d \u201cpregnant,\u201d and \u201cmenstruation,\u201d even the phrase for the common cold, are all unrecognizably different in Rohingya and Chittagonian. There seem even to be differences between language used by male and female Rohingya speakers.    <\/span><\/p>\n

Despite these difficulties TWB and our consortium partners, BBC Media Action and Internews, have been able to make a huge difference. Here are some of the highlights:<\/span><\/p>\n