ReliefWeb

During the 20th century, millions of people were forced to flee their homes in what is now Bangladesh. They were displaced both within the territory and to neighbouring areas by different triggers. As of January 2015, IDMC estimates that at least 431,000 people were displaced in the country as a result of conflict and violence. Information on their number and situation is limited, contested and outdated, however, with little known about the scale of new displacement in 2014.

Bangladesh is also highly prone to natural hazards, mainly cyclones and floods, and hundreds of thousands of people are displaced each year by the disasters they cause. In 2013, more than 1.1 million fled cyclone Mahasen. More than 325,000 were newly displaced by flooding in 2014.

Over the last three years, inter-communal violence targeting indigenous, Hindu and Buddhist communities has caused new displacement. The establishment of development projects has also forced large numbers of people to flee, including in areas experiencing displacement as a result of conflict and violence.

Most of those displaced by conflict and violence live in protracted displacement. They include about 280,000 people displaced in the south-eastern Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) region by armed conflict and inter-communal violence since 1973; and more than 151,000 Urdu speakers displaced in Dhaka and other urban areas in 1971. Current estimates are significantly lower than the number originally displaced, which in CHT stood at 667,000 in 2000. For the displaced Urdu speakers it was several hundred thousand in 1972.

Obstacles to durable solutions include failure to fully implement the 1997 CHT peace accord, discrimination in terms of access to services and civil documentation and recurring inter-communal violence. Bangladesh has no national policy or legislation on IDPs, and the government has no overall plan to respond to the needs of different groups and situations. Instead national and local authorities’ responses tend to be piecemeal and rarely based on an analysis of IDPs’ needs. These shortcomings, and the fact that most people displaced by conflict and violence are from marginalised minority groups, have contributed to prolonging their displacement. International organisations provide development assistance, but do not specifically focus on conflict IDPs.

The response to displacement caused by disasters, which government entities, NGOs and regional and international organisations participate in, tends to be better, but here too a comprehensive strategy is lacking, particularly regarding the prevention of displacement.

The first step in effectively addressing IDPs’ needs is for the government to systematically collect data on their number and situation. It could do so by carrying out or supporting a profiling exercise. Such research would also help to identify the obstacles that prevent IDPs from achieving durable solutions, and to devise action plans in response. The government further needs to make every effort to ensure that development projects do not cause displacement, and to provide adequate compensation to those affected when it cannot be avoided, in line with international standards including the basic principles and guidelines on development-based evictions and displacement.