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Children in camps for displaced Muslims in western Myanmar grow up with little food, healthcare and education, and in unsanitary conditions
SITTWE, Myanmar (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The woman I met in a camp for displaced Muslims had one of the saddest expressions I’ve ever seen. She was squatting on the dirt floor of her small hut, which was made of straw and propped up by bamboo poles. Other than a bundle of blankets, pillows and a black plastic trash bag in the corner, the place was bare. A wide-eyed, naked boy with a swollen belly sat in front of her, his lower body covered in dust.
This is 25-year-old Lawshita Begum and her two-year-old son. They share the simple shelter with her husband and the couple’s four other children.
Like many in this unregistered camp of about 1,100 displaced Muslims, they’d fled Sandawli village on June 11, 2012, when their houses were burnt down during sectarian riots in Rakhine state in western Myanmar.
The nearly 200 families sought refuge in a community school for the first three or four months, but they had to leave when the school reopened. They then found a plot of land between a registered displaced persons camp and a stream - a source of water to meet basic needs - and set up ramshackle tents that they hoped would provide them with minimal shelter.
There were no toilets and I didn’t see any water points. The people used the latrines built for the crowded registered camp.
As I was walking away, the woman looked at me straight in the eye, and gestured towards her stomach and shook her hand, to say there’s nothing inside there. Then she pointed at her child and shook her hand again.
In other words, they had nothing to eat.
As unregistered internally displaced persons (IDPs), Begum and her family - and the rest of that camp - aren’t eligible for the rice, oil and pulses handed out by humanitarian agencies such as the U.N. World Food Programme.
Maung Maung, a neighbour, told me, “We have to find our own food but we cannot find jobs. So we send the children out to beg for donations of rice and other food.”
INVISIBLE SCARS
During the five days we visited the camps for displaced Muslims - those who were forced out of their homes include stateless Rohingya who Myanmar does not recognise as citizens, as well as the Kaman, who are one of the 135 official ethnic groups in Myanmar - I met many families in a similar state.
Parents who had lost their jobs, earnings and with it, their ability to feed their families and their dignity. Children bearing the signs of malnutrition. Many suffering or recovering from diarrhoea. They were in tattered clothes - if not half or fully naked - running around the rubbish-strewn campgrounds.
Everywhere we went we were mobbed by kids, who, like kids anywhere, were curious about visitors with shiny cameras asking too many questions.
Unlike kids who are free, however, they have no future.
The violence has left them with scars, both visible - protruding stomachs, skin infections, and so on - and invisible - fears and nightmares.
Their education has been disrupted. Community schools and child-friendly spaces set up by aid agencies provide some sense of normalcy, but they’re still living in extremely basic temporary shelters. Many saw friends and family members lose their lives.
They are unable to leave their camps, where sanitation and living conditions are already precarious and could worsen with the upcoming monsoon season. In a recent diarrhoea outbreak, at least three children died.
Aid agencies say many children are already experiencing severe malnutrition, which could affect them for the rest of their lives.
According to the Lancet medical journal, stunted children (too short for their age) complete fewer years of schooling and earn less income as adults, hindering their economic potential.
In addition, the consequences of insufficient nutrition continue into adulthood and are passed on to the next generation as undernourished girls and women have children of their own.
I hope that fate doesn’t befall Lawshita Begum if she has another child.
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