The three most common child protection risks in Bangladesh are neglect, child marriage, and intrafamily conflicts. The difficult conditions of the crisis add stress to the situation. Camps are especially dangerous places for children and the existing conditions of precarity put a strain on families and individuals.

About JF-CPiE in Bangladesh

The Joining Forces for Child Protection in Emergency (JF-CPiE) in Bangladesh is mainly focused on strengthening Child Protection mechanisms in the Rohingya and Host communities in Cox´s Bazar to reduce child protection related risks and incidents. The project is implemented in Camps 17, 20 and 20E as well as 4 host communities in Ukhiya (Jaliapalong and Ratnapalong) and Teknaf (Baharchora and Teknaf Municipality) Upazila.  

The duration of the project is 2 years (July’22-June’24). The JF-CPiE project in Bangladesh is part of a global consortia project implemented by six international organizations (Plan International (Lead), Save the Children, World Vision, Child Fund, SOS Kinderdörfer and TdH) across six countries. The overall project is aimed at achieving the outcome “Improved protection of vulnerable girls, boys, adolescent girls, and adolescent boys (<18 years) through access to quality child protection prevention, mitigation, and response services and supports”. 

Why Joining Forces for Child Protection in Emergencies (JF-CPiE)? 

The project is firmly rooted within the Strategy for Humanitarian assistance abroad. Protection is one of the key topics of the GFFO Strategy and this is the project’s main focus, including both targeted protection measures (results 1-4) and supporting the mainstreaming of protection with other sectors and non-protection specialist staff (results 5 and 6). The specific strategic focus of prevention, countermeasures, treatment, and follow-up care in the context of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is also touched upon by including the identification of SGBV risks in result 3, as well as the target group of child survivors of SGBV in result 4. 

With its cash- and voucher-based assistance components, the project also supports the implementation of Germany’s commitments to significantly increase the share of cash in humanitarian aid, as adopted at the World Humanitarian Summit and in the Grand Bargain. 

This project also considers other cross-cutting issues prominent in the GFFO’s strategy, from participation of vulnerable groups like children and adolescent in conflict countries and settings to strengthening localisation by working through local partners in 4 of 6 project countries. 

All crisis contexts in this project have received GFFO funding in the last year and are in the focus of S09’s regional position papers for 2022. 

With regards to GFFO’s emphasis on supporting forgotten crises, 4 of the crises (South Sudan, CAR, Bangladesh, Colombia) are found on ECHO’s Forgotten Crises Assessment[1] for 2021, while NRC also includes Burkina Faso, South Sudan, and Ethiopia in its analysis of most neglected displacement crises[2]. 

Finally, with a view to innovation, to our knowledge this is the first project that proposes a global consortium approach to enable a common results framework, as well as impact and learning across multiple crises, providing an innovative approach to humanitarian practice.  

JF-CPiE methodology

• Clearly state the mission and purpose of the project. 
• Explain the problem it aims to solve or the need it addresses. 
• Provide a step-by-step overview of how users can engage with the project. 

Key Outcomes 

Overall Project Outcome: Improved protection of vulnerable girls, boys, adolescent girls, and adolescent boys (<18 years) through access to quality child protection prevention, mitigation, and response services and supports. 

Output 1: Vulnerable girls, boys, adolescent girls, and adolescent boys have improved knowledge, skills, and capacities to protect themselves from violence.   

Output 2: Improved ability of caregivers and families to meet protection needs of vulnerable children and to reduce drivers of child protection risks through capacity-building, CVA, NFI, IGA start-up and nutrition support. 

Output 3: Strengthened community-level child protection mechanisms to provide protective environments for vulnerable children and adolescents, promote positive gender social and gender norms, and prevent and respond to violence. 

Output 4: Vulnerable children and adolescents, including children associated with armed groups and armed forces, child laborers, and child survivors of SGBV, receive access to specialized child protection services, including timely, quality case management services and referrals to multi-sectoral services. 

Output 5: Improved child protection coordination through strategic planning, information sharing, capacity-building, and strengthening standard operating procedures in order to improve humanitarian programming for vulnerable children and reduce protection risks to children 

Output 6: Global, regional, and national-level humanitarian actors are equipped with strengthened evidence, programmatic tools, and advocacy for integrated child protection and food security programming for child and adolescent well-being outcomes. 

Current Situation in Project Region 

The joint Response Plan by UNOCHA (HRP 2022) conducted that 1.46 million people are in need and targeted, with 514.000 people in host communities and 919.000 Rohingya refugees and FDMNs (49.1% men & boys; 50.9% women & girls).  According to the HRP 2022 over 480.000 Rohingya children under 18 years old (234.744 girls & 247.021 boys) are targeted, while over 280.000 children in the host communities of UKHIYA and TEKNAF (140.684% girls & 145.312% boys) are targeted and therefore in need of Child protection. 

Cox’s Bazar, a district within the Chattogram division is a highly popular tourist destination. It however remains one of the poorest districts in Bangladesh with several economic challenges, and approximately 33% of the population living below the poverty line.  

In the Cox’s Bazar district, there are 1,88,919 Rohingya’s households and 8,71,924 people living in 34 camps and 3,94,976 houses and 19,74880 people residing in eight Upazilla. Protection, Shelter / NFI, Education, WASH, Health, Nutrition, Food Security, Gender Based Violence sub-sector, Site Management, and CwC are the main sectors where the UN agencies are working to give assistance. In addition, 67 international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and 59 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are working in 11 sectors and sub-sectors to assist Rohingya and host community residents. Over 50% of both the refugee and host community population are children, making them the largest single affected population group. 

Host communities and refugee populations experience a number of shared protection challenges and risks. Both are vulnerable to the growing impacts from climate change and the number of disasters the district experiences, including monsoons, flooding, landslides, and fires. Livelihoods and household financial strain are a primary issue for host community and refugee households alike, exacerbating many protection risks for children and families. Local systems are in need of strengthening, particularly around social service provision and social protection. In addition, refugees face a significant and growing number of protection risks. These include: restrictions on movement, social cohesion and tensions between camp residents and with host communities. Child Protection insecurity and safety concerns, and challenges related to registration and relocation, such as the relocation of refugees to Bhasan Char, which have reportedly resulted in increased protection risks to children, including family separation? Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the humanitarian response and service delivery. Lockdowns instituted by the Government to help save lives, also resulted in limited-tono access to camps for many months during 2020-2021, affecting service delivery and protection outcomes. COVID-19 has also exacerbated existing economic strains felt by all affected populations, heightening many protection risks. 

Recently, the government of Bangladesh (GoB) planned to relocate 100,000 Rohingya refugees from crowded refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar to Bhasan Char (BC) Island in Hatiya upazila of Noakhali District. Since December 2020, a total of 18,528 Rohingya Refugees have been relocated and the government have a plan to relocate an additional 80,000 refugees to Bhasan Char by 2022.

The EU, OIC and UN representatives expressed satisfaction towards the facilities and living conditions of the FDMN in Bhasan Char, and the UN agreeing to the government’s requests to offer food aid and health services on the island. The United Nations has also urged to the Government of Bangladesh that refugees who choose to move to Bhasan Char should have basic rights and services on the island, which would include effective freedom of movement to and from the mainland, as well as access to education, health care, and livelihood opportunities. This would help to lay the foundations for a productive and secure community on Bhasan Char.

Humanitarian Needs in Project Region 

As mentioned above, Cox’s Bazar is one of 20 districts in Bangladesh considered to be ‘lagging behind’ the national average for development indicators, with approximately 33% of the population living below the poverty line compared to the national average of 31.5%. About 32.2% of households have access to electricity, compared to the national average of 56.5%, and 11.8% of households do not have access to toilets and practice open defecation, compared to the national average of 7.7%.

Further, 78.5% of Cox’s Bazar’s is rural, and most communities live in remote areas. As like as other coastal districts in Bangladesh, the frequency of natural disasters and impact of climate change hinders significant development progress.  Cox’s Bazar is diverse linguistically, ethnically, and religiously. In additional to Bangla, people in Cox’s Bazar speak Chittagonian, which is slightly similar to Rohingya.  More than 90% of Cox’s Bazar is Muslim and the district is considered culturally and religiously conservative compared to the rest of Bangladesh. The second most practiced religion is Hinduism (4% average), followed by Buddhism (2% average). The upazilas bordering the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) are home to larger minority communities, most of whom are not Muslim.

Target Groups and Affected People 

More than 1 million people both Rohingya and host community are directly affected due to Rohingya Refugee influx. The inhabitants of camps, especially children, mothers and other vulnerable groups. Child protection concerns have increased in the camp, with the most reported child protection issues being child labour, neglect, child marriage, risk of trafficking. There are in dire need of quality preventive and curative health, nutrition, and sanitation services. There have also scarcity of diversified and nutritious food in the camp.                                

The shelters in the camp areas are small and often comprise of one room in a low bamboo structure encased in tarpaulin and weighed down by palm leaves and bricks on the roof. The encroaching bad weather means that the camps are prone to waterlogging and damp, meaning that firewood storage and cooking needs to be done inside the house, along with the general living. Groups of families often choose to live communally, allocating separate residences and representatives for duties such as cooking, childcare, sleeping and so on. This division of labour allows more to be made of the limited space and resources available.

According to J-MSNA 2021 (ISCG), the most commonly reported priority needs included shelter materials, access to food, access to income-generating activities (IGAs), access to safe and functional latrines, and electricity. Access to safe and functional latrines, and electricity were particularly important to HHs with female respondents, while HHs with male respondents more frequently identified access to food as one of their top three priority needs. 

The World Vision-BRCR HHs survey (December 2021) confirmed pretty much the above, with most commonly reported priority needs including access to food, shelter facilities, WASH facilities, electricity facilities, access to IGAs, health and nutrition service, education facilities.

Evolution of Humanitarian Needs 

After the influx, the whole Rohingya community with the host community also were in too much of a vulnerable situation. With the intervention of the different organizations the situation got a bit better. But after the entry of the pandemic, the vulnerability got worse again. With other problems, child protection and education were affected significantly. Even many projects related to child education had to be stopped for the social distancing measures. That’s why, with the course of this project the awareness activities against child violence, child marriage can make an important role to push community to ensure an environment where children are safe, and all their rights are protected. Besides, MHPSS and education programmes are mandatory parts of the project which will achieve the vision of WV where every child will get a better future.  

Child protection risks in Bangladesh

“The way of thinking of people here is very conservative. Here, the participants mentioned that people have a negative perception about girls’ school education.”

Adol, Camp 20, FGD with Girls, Plan International, consultant observation.

To support project implementation, a baseline and needs assessment was conducted between November 2022 and January 2023.

The baseline study combined simple and stepwise sampling approaches and targeted youth, their caregivers and heads of households, as well as members of the broader community, such as health workers.

Download the brief report now

In Bangladesh, Plan International works in Camps 17, 20 and 20E in Cox’s Bazar; Host community – Jaliapalong, and Ratnapalong (Ukhiya) and Baharchora and Teknaf Municipality (Teknaf) in the Chittagonj Division.

In Bangladesh, World Vision works in Camps 8E, 13, 15, 16 in Cox’s Bazar and in the Ratnapalong & Palongkhaliin host communities in the Chittagonj Division.

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This publication was produced with the financial support of the German Humanitarian Assistance
Its contents are the sole responsibility of Joining Forces and do not necessarily reflect the views of the German Humanitarian Assistance.