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Social distancing around water taps in Cox’s Bazar (Photo: World Vision)
Social distancing around water taps in Cox’s Bazar (Photo: World Vision)

SocietyMay 11, 2020

How the world’s largest refugee camp is dealing with the threat of Covid-19

Social distancing around water taps in Cox’s Bazar (Photo: World Vision)
Social distancing around water taps in Cox’s Bazar (Photo: World Vision)

As New Zealanders start to consider the end of the Covid-19 outbreak here, it’s time to look outward, to the many refugees in overcrowded, underfunded settlements worldwide.

In Cox’s Bazar on the southeast coast of Bangladesh, refugees fleeing war, famine and death live in one-room bamboo structures with plastic sheet roofs. Toilets are shared between up to 20 people and water stations are equally crowded.

For these families, the precautions we’ve been long asked to take here in New Zealand – hand washing, social distancing – are not possible. With an approximated 40,000 people per square kilometre, the rules can’t be the same as here, but the implications of an outbreak of Covid could be devastating. 

Around 26 million people around the world are considered refugees. They’re people who have been forced from their homes, usually because of humanitarian crises like war, religious or ethnic persecution, or natural disasters. Around 10% of the world’s refugee population lives in camps, the largest of which is Cox’s Bazar, home to almost 900,000 displaced people.

While there are currently no confirmed cases of Covid-19 in a refugee camp, various aid charities and organisations have been working hard to ensure a potentially calamitous outbreak doesn’t happen. It’s a looming threat, because the close quarters and lack of access to hygiene solutions in camps make them a breeding ground for infections and disease.

Grant Bayldon, national director of World Vision New Zealand, says while there is healthcare in refugee camps, the high-level care that is necessary for the worst cases of Covid is completely out of the question. “You’ve generally got very basic health services, it depends on the individual refugee situation, but what you certainly don’t have is access to any advanced medical care. Your chance of getting on a ventilator or an ICU bed are zero, really…”

Education is a priority, here a man is teaching proper hand washing techniques (Photo: World Vision)

For the time being, most of the aid work being carried out in camps involves trying to rapidly spread accurate information about how to keep safe, while continuing to distribute the food and healthcare supplies that so many refugee families count on to survive. 

Refugees are already vulnerable, not just because of their living conditions, but also because of their status within the country they live. The loss of documentation during the transition between countries often means refugees in and out of camps have a much harder time accessing healthcare. Add that to the struggle of living in confined areas with very basic hygiene equipment, and it’s highly likely that Covid-19 would spread wide and fast if it were to reach a camp. 

“Refugees are there either because of natural disaster or because of violence or war, and they’ve got all these layers of crisis that they’re already carrying… in a lot of these camps there might be issues of malnutrition, because being able to provide nutritious meals for a family is difficult,” explains Darren Brunk, a humanitarian specialist from Oxfam New Zealand. “There might be other disease outbreaks, like we’re seeing in Bangladesh right now. It’s a really bad year for dengue, four times the normal rate. You have these other risk factors that people are already carrying. If something like Covid-19 is introduced into these situations it makes people all the more vulnerable, and puts more pressure on an already totally overcharged health system.” 

For the 900,000 people in Cox’s Bazar, Covid-19 is just the most recent layer on top of a life already piled high with safety and health threats. Asia Pacific Migration and Displacement Coordinator for the IFRC, Ezekiel Simperingham, says at this time of year most of the organisations at Cox’s Bazar would be, among other things, preparing for the oncoming monsoon season that usually hits from June to October. In 2019, the monsoon season put hundreds of families at risk of landslides and flooding, and damaged at least 47 water distribution points and 600 latrines, intensifying health risks from water-borne diseases.

“It just accentuates all of the challenges that were already there, and not just the health challenges. We need to think about the experience of the whole person, so it creates more stress in the home and that can increase already high rates of domestic violence… It’s putting new increasing economic pressure on families who had no financial reserves and in many cases no access to livelihoods,” says Simperingham.

Much of the work currently being carried out by volunteers and aid workers is focused on trying to get accurate information out to the residents. Bayldon says there has been an issue with misinformation spreading in camps, so one of the most important tasks right now is making sure everybody knows as much as possible. He’s confident that the established web of connections World Vision has built through decades of work within these communities is wide enough to get accurate information into every corner of the camp.

“We have really good networks into those communities because we’ve been working there since people first arrived about three years ago. We also have a lot of contact points within the community. We have contact with everyone when they come to do their weekly food pickup, we have contact around water points.”

The refugees aren’t the only people in the camps that these organisations have a responsibility of care for. The health and wellbeing of aid workers, who are mostly locals, has also been a priority – ensuring not only that they’re safe but also that they’re not vectors for the virus within the camps. Part of the strategy to help aid workers and volunteers has involved stripping back of many of the services usually provided, says Simperingham.

“The government in Bangladesh has implemented a lockdown in the entire district and that’s really to protect the district from the cases that are in other districts. It means there’s a decrease in the kind of support that we can provide the refugees in the camp.

“There’s restrictions on the kind of staff that can enter the district and we’re restricted to providing really, really essential services only, so that’s food distribution, healthcare, making sure there’s enough fresh water, and making sure that we’re providing enough information to the communities.”

Hand washing stations like this one are being set up throughout the camps (Photo: World Vision)

In the last week, New Zealand has achieved its first “zero days” since the beginning of the outbreak here. Evidence shows the number of active cases decreasing day by day, and a move to level two is on the horizon, but as we start to look towards the rebuilding of our own economy, for those of us with the time and resources, casting our gaze further afield is crucial.

Simperingham, Bayldon and Brunk all say the most useful support they can get right now is financial donations. Bayldon urges those who have resources to spare to consider giving to those who need it most. 

“It’s the basic stuff that needs doing. If people want to have an impact, to help with the global effort against Covid-19 and to help the people who are suffering the most, donating is the most effective way to do that.”

But that’s not the only way people can amplify the voices of these vulnerable communities. “You can support by advocacy to the New Zealand government,” says Brunk. “Helping us to push them to provide an additional $25m for humanitarian assistance… if people have time for an action, that can be just as powerful if it moves the government to help us out.”

These organisations continue to work to support families who have already faced immeasurable hardship, all while we in New Zealand move from level three, to level two, and hopefully back to the way things were. But for millions of people around the world, “the way things were” is not the way they should be.

Click here to donate to Oxfam, World Vision or the Red Cross‘ Covid-19 appeals.

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Photo: Rubberball/Getty Images
Photo: Rubberball/Getty Images

OPINIONSocietyMay 10, 2020

Emily Writes: Yes, marriage sucks, so why did I renew my vows?

Photo: Rubberball/Getty Images
Photo: Rubberball/Getty Images

With fewer couples than ever getting married, women are realising marriage is not all it’s cracked up to be. Emily Writes asks herself why, despite this, she’s so enamoured with her own.

Last year, New Zealand recorded a record low of marriages and civil unions, with just 19,071 – less than half the rate of 30 years ago, and it’s been declining slowly since since the peak in 1971. So why is it that people don’t want to get married any more?

My husband and I had been together for almost a decade when we married. We’d watched friends marry and divorce and then remarry, all before we’d even become engaged. Seeing one friend marry the woman he’d cheated on his wife with was so galling to my husband that he didn’t even attend their wedding. So obviously, we were very cautious of marriage as an institution. We’d not been around any successful versions of it. But we were sure of each other.

When we got engaged it was exciting and we were hopeful. But if I’m honest, we really just wanted a party and to take our minds off the fact that getting pregnant was not the easy task we’d thought it would be. We focused on how the wedding would be “different”. No love, honour and obey. No “you may kiss the bride” (we thought we were quite untraditional by saying “you may now kiss”). It all seems rather silly to me now, a decade on. I don’t know why we thought any of that mattered.

We didn’t exchange rings as neither of us liked the symbolism, but a few years later I dropped the pounamu he’d given me at our wedding. It shattered and I was heartbroken. A few months later he gave me a ring he’d designed, and inside was a shard of the pounamu, rescued from the floor. I adored it. And then lost it. I ended up buying a three-ring special at The Warehouse. A garish and blingy gold number that reminded me of something a footballer’s wife might wear. Clocking in at just under $1,000, it took us forever to pay it off. It’s my favourite thing. I’m not sure what that says about me – except that it turns out I do like sparkly things.

Photo: Rubberball/Getty Images

Our first son was born in the September of the year following our November wedding. We had a second son two years later. Our first boy was fragile and we lived in and out of hospital, and we found having a second child beyond exhausting. It was harder than anything we’d ever faced. Or so we thought. But somehow we muddled through. For a year in the middle, it was hell. I’d never felt so tired in my whole life, but I also never felt like I wanted to leave. I felt we could be fixed with sleep. And it turns out, we could.

Our son was diagnosed with another illness last year. Many people had suggested to us that life-threatening illnesses or going through almost losing a child often led to the death of relationships. We found one study that contrasted married parents caring for a child with a chronic illness or disability with married parents of so-called “well” children. Neither marital quality nor perceived marital stability differed between the two groups. “These results call into question assumptions that children with special needs irreparably harm marriages,” the study’s authors said.

We found this reassuring, but only because it mirrored our relationship. We had turned towards each other rather than away from each other in the hard times. Over the years our marriage had become my home, and our relationship was stronger than ever. But ours was a relationship of equals before we married, and that became only more important when we had kids.

I won’t pretend I know what happens behind closed doors, but marriage these days is looking bad. I often find myself telling mothers “you should get a divorce”. When I say this publicly, it is always met with more horror than the stories of husbands who have never changed a child’s nappy, husbands who have children who are seven or eight but won’t look after them if Mum isn’t home. I’m always told, “You can’t tell people to split over a nappy!” But it’s not a nappy. It’s that they’re actively choosing not to parent despite having a child.

I will never forget the story of a mum who went out to see my play. She had two children aged two and four, and this was her first time out in four years. Her husband called her dozens of times after she left the house. When he got hold of her, he said there was an emergency. When she got home she found him on the couch – he told her the baby woke every time he tried to put her down and he wanted to go have a smoke. Her mother-in-law suggested she shouldn’t have left the babies at home. She was told by others she had created this situation for herself by not encouraging him to parent more. But there’s happy news – she divorced him. And now every time her smiling face pops up on my feed, I’m thrilled. She’s met a lovely man who loves the kids and seems happier than she has ever been.

I’ve seen many, many women divorce over the last few years and they’re all happier for it. That’s not to say the divorce itself isn’t often brutal and painful and horrific – but the aftermath? They have no regrets in leaving.

Author and feminist commentator Clementine Ford describes marriage as a trap, and she says “women are rising up”. They know this to be true and that’s why they’re not marrying. When I asked women what they thought of marriage for this story, many agreed.

Heterosexual marriage is often a cover for brutal physical, sexual, emotional and financial abuse. Studies have shown marriage economically benefits men more than women. The divorce rate is 7.7%. It’s little wonder women are choosing to reject marriage and the patriarchal system it upholds. Many women told me they don’t need a piece of paper or a ceremony or some kind of public declaration to commit. Many thought it foolish to marry. Especially in this day and age.

As Ford said to me, “Women are beginning to realise the romance of marriage that’s been sold to them is largely a cover for a far less appealing outcome in which they become a man’s maid, mother and caregiver for little to no reward. And for many of them, they’re stuck in it before they even know what’s happened.”

And to be honest, I don’t at all disagree. I’ve seen this with my own eyes in the marriages of others, for years and years. Even before I married.

So why, then, did I renew my vows a few months ago? I don’t know, to be honest. Last year was one of the hardest years of our lives, coming on top of what had already been a brutal few years. We have now been together as a couple longer than we have been individuals. We didn’t need to prove anything. So why did we stand with our two little boys as our witnesses and laugh our way through a silly ceremony? I don’t know. I just know that when I look at him, everything works. Everything is achievable. Everything is OK. I just know he’s my past, my present, and my future. We didn’t need proof, no relationship does. But we did it anyway and it was wonderful.

But love is a bit like that, isn’t it? It makes no sense at all.

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