With the monsoon season nearing in Bangladesh, refugees living in makeshift shelters after fleeing Myanmar face a major risk from floods and landslides

A little girl dressed in pink, maybe three years old, is smiling through a rip in a tarpaulin. She is leaning against the bamboo pole holding up her home. Below her is a 15-foot drop, straight down to a dried-up riverbed.

The steep valleys across the huge Rohingya refugee camps are a growing concern as Bangladesh’s monsoon season approaches. Last summer, when hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled across the border from Myanmar in the face of an alleged genocide, the Bangladesh government allocated state-owned land for their camps.

The land was Bangladesh’s reserve forest: beautiful, dense, lush woodland that stretched for miles across the south of the country.

Within a few months, the forest was stripped away completely, leaving just compacted silt that collapses to dust at a touch. Bangladesh’s monsoon season will soon begin, with weeks of rain. Cyclones can hit the country anytime between March and July.

“I am very worried about the monsoon,” says Mohammed Rofik, 27. “It was hard enough in Myanmar, where we had good houses. Those houses would get destroyed by the storms. Here, we have houses made of plastic and bamboo.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Large areas of forest were cleared to make space for the refugees’ tents. There are concerns that the camp could be hit by flooding and landslides. Photograph: Noor Alam/The Guardian

The speed of the Rohingya movement across the border last August took aid agencies by surprise. As a result, thousands of homes were built out of nothing more than tarpaulin and bamboo. “Lives will be lost,” says one aid worker. “The houses at the top of the hills are at risk of landslides, the ones at the bottom could flood.”

One assessment, carried out by Dhaka University and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN refugee agency, suggests that up to one-third of the settlement area could be flooded, with more than 85,000 refugees losing their shelters. Another 23,000 refugees living on steep slopes could be at risk of landslides.

Because of its location at the top of the funnel-shaped Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh is especially vulnerable to cyclone damage. In 1970, a cyclone killed up to 500,000 people.

As aid agencies race to reduce the monsoon risk, they face other difficulties. Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s prime minister, has faced enormous criticism for allowing almost 700,000 refugees into southern Bangladesh last year, and the Rohingya have not been granted formal status as refugees.

With a general election looming in Bangladesh at the end of this year, the government is insisting that the camps are not a permanent presence. This is complicating monsoon-planning.

A few brick roads and concrete drains have been built in recent weeks, but aid agencies are banned from making long-term plans. The agencies are constructing bamboo bridges, and handing out sandbags.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Children are banned from learning Bengali, to ensure that they will never be able to integrate with local people. Photograph: Noor Alam/The Guardian

This also means that instead of building schools, aid agencies can only create “child friendly spaces”.

Romida, 13, who arrived from Burma about six months ago, said she wanted to learn more. At a child friendly space run by Brac, a Bangladeshi charity, the children are only allowed to sing songs in their native language. They are banned from learning Bengali, to ensure that they will never be able to integrate with the locals.

There are about 900,000 Rohingya in Bangladesh at the moment, according to UN refugee agency figures, with roughly 212,000 in the country even before the crisis last summer.

Some of the camps in southern Bangladesh have existed since the early 90s, meaning anyone under the age of 25 has never lived outside a refugee camp.

“I want a good education and a good job,” says Romida. “I am scared I will spend my whole life in a refugee camp.”

Madrasas – Islamic learning centres – are filling the educational void. All over the camps, children were gathered together, chanting the Qur’an. The mosques, the most solidly built constructions in the camps, may become part of monsoon planning.

Unlike many of the world’s refugee camps, the Rohingya communities are not fenced, which is also creating concerns among local Bangladeshis. The area around the camps is poor and rural. Refugees are given a fixed amount of rice, lentils and cooking oil every month, with many selling the surplus on the black market. As a result, the cost of rice, a key local produce, has collapsed along with the price of labour , causing anger among locals.

Fuel for cooking stoves is not distributed, so children are walking miles to gather firewood for the families. The continued deforestation of the area angers locals, while forest visits pose another risk for refugees, since the reserve forests used to be home to dozens of wild elephants – some of which remain in the area. Last month, a refugee was killed and a number of people injured when an elephant trampled several shacks.

“All the children have to walk a long way to get fuel,” says Rofik. “The Bangladeshis shout at them, telling them not to take it, but we don’t know what else to do.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Around the camps, some preparations are being made for the monsoon season. Here, a brick road is built in the Jamtoli camp. Photograph: Noor Alam/The Guardian

Above Romida’s head, in a child friendly space, a handwritten poster highlights another danger facing refugees.

“Do not go to the toilet alone at night,” it says. “Community services are free. You will never be asked for favours for them.”

Several refugees say people have been trafficked out of the camps.

“I have heard that people come to this camp and take the children. Two children were taken on F block. We go to the toilet together at night, and we stay together, so that we are never alone,” says Shamshida, 35.

The Rohingya have also faced questions in recent weeks, with criticism of some of the stories about the alleged genocide. The Rohingya want humanitarian aid to continue to flow to the camps, and are aware that stories of their plight will keep the aid coming. At a child friendly space, also run by Brac, an eight-year-old girl explains that it took a five-day walk to get to the camp, but that her family were now happy to be in Bangladesh.

“I am really happy to be here, because in Myanmar we have to pay for everything,” she says. “But here everything is free.”

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The Rohingyas had faced years of poverty and deprivation in Myanmar. Diphtheria, an illness almost completely eradicated in Bangladesh by routine vaccinations, has swept through the camp in recent weeks. Even before the exodus, education was poor among the Rohingya, with high levels of illiteracy.

Dr Rifat, working at a clinic, says the literacy rate was problematic. He had to create a system to ensure mothers give the correct medicine to the correct child.

“I draw symbols on the package, two pills, twice a day, for example,” he says. “And then I tie a ribbon to the package, and a ribbon round the wrist of the child. Then the mother knows the blue package goes with the child wearing a blue ribbon.”

He breaks off from the interview to steer a mother and baby away from the long queue for services in the clinic, guiding her instead to a basic isolation area.

“That baby looks like it may have measles,” he explains. “We don’t want to make things any worse. We are trying our best to make things better.”

Dozens of refugees gave detailed descriptions of their journeys to Bangladesh, describing how their villages had been attacked repeatedly by Myanmar militias. In the past week, more footage has emerged from Myanmar suggesting that efforts are being made to cover up mass graves.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Refugees fill sandbags, as the camps prepare for the monsoon season. Photograph: Noor Alam/The Guardian

Speaking through a translator, Karim Ullah, from northern Rakhine, says 25 people were killed in an attack on his village, with a further 38 seriously injured.

He is interrupted by a man in the crowd, speaking in his native language: “Tell them that your sisters were raped,” says the man.

“No,” Karim says in an aside. “That did not happen in my village.”

He continued with his detailed account, saying that the Rohingya needed ID cards and protection from reprisals.

“I want justice,” says Karim. “Everything we had is left in Myanmar. Everything.”