The flow of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh shows no sign of abating

By THE DATA TEAM

NOT since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 have more people crossed an international border in a shorter span of time than currently from Myanmar to Bangladesh. Since August 25th, when attacks on police and army posts by Rohingya insurgents in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine triggered an army-led pogrom, nearly 600,000 Muslim Rohingyas have fled the Buddhist-majority state, which is also Myanmar’s poorest.

Bangladesh is said now to host at least 800,000 stateless Rohingyas on a 100km-long strip of land in the most underdeveloped part of the country (one UN estimate puts the figure at around 1m). Seven weeks into the exodus, the number of people crossing by land, or the river that divides Bangladesh and Myanmar, is still rising. There has in fact been a surge in new arrivals in recent days (see chart). The conditions in the rapidly growing camps are squalid; the humanitarian response is slow and inadequate. More than 200,000 refugees are children.