'We didn't come here to eat. We came here to save our life': health and nutrition challenges facing adolescents in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh

Maintaining commitments to age-, gender- and disability-responsive healthcare services stipulated in the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees is challenging in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, which is home for over two million Bangladeshi citizens in one of the poorest regions in the country and some 860,000 Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar. Local Bangladeshi government structures have limited resources and unclear mandates on health service provision for the Rohingya, guided by competing political agendas including the repatriation of the Rohingya to Myanmar, relocation to other areas of Bangladesh and the continuation of parallel humanitarian health-service provision in the camps. The Global Compact seeks to guarantee the expansion of national health systems to refugees and to prioritise sector expertise to enhance quality of care to host communities and refugees alike. The response from the health, food security and nutrition sectors in Bangladesh – guided by the Civil Surgeon, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Programme (WFP), UNICEF and their partners and donors – has provided life-saving clinical and preventive care since the mass refugee influx in 2017. However, limited capacity and political will for the district to absorb the Rohingya into national health systems, have limited the scope for both refugee inclusion and the commitment to age-, gender- and disability-responsive healthcare services for refugees.

Suggested citation

Guglielmi, S., Jones, N., Muz, J., Baird, S., Mitu, K. and Ala Uddin, M. (2020) ‘We didn’t come here to eat. We came here to save our life’: Health and nutrition challenges facing adolescents in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.’ Policy Brief. London: Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence. (https://www.gage.odi.org/publication/we-didnt-come-here-to-eat-we-came-here-to-save-our-life-health-and-nutrition-challenges-facing-adolescents-in-coxs-bazar-bangladesh/)