Humanitarian need for Rohingya refugees and the host community in Cox’s Bazar, home to the world’s largest refugee camp, is daunting. While Bangladesh should be commended for its generosity in opening its borders to Rohingya refugees, accelerated efforts are required to support the over 1.2 million people in need of humanitarian and development assistance. Simultaneously, further pressure is needed from the international community and regional actors on the Government of Myanmar (GoM) to create conditions in Rakhine conducive to the safe, voluntary and sustainable return of the Rohingya. Building on new research from the International Rescue Committee on positive market conditions in Cox’s Bazar, this brief highlights the untapped potential of livelihoods programming to increase self-reliance and economic empowerment for affected communities. It concludes with recommendations to the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) and key actors engaged with the crisis to support refugees and locals, and women in particular, to rebuild their lives and livelihoods and take back control of their future.

Dalal, 18, wears her best dress, green dotted with tarnished gold beads. She and her friends sit close together on the concrete floor of a tent in a temporary settlement in Akkar, Lebanon, not far from the Syrian border.

Right now, an Iraqi military operation to retake the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul is underway and 200,000 terrified citizens are expected to flee the city in the first weeks. Without clear routes for families to escape safely, hundreds of thousands of people may be caught in the fighting.

IRC president and CEO David Miliband recently visited our programmes in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Here he talks about his trip.

Meet an ambitious Syrian woman who operates a beauty salon in her home in Jordan with support from the IRC.

From packed classrooms to indefinite school closures, COVID-19 has undoubtedly impacted the lives of school children all around the world. Parents and teachers have been scrambling to work out solutions to keep kids learning during these turbulent times.

This report is the third publication by the International Rescue Commitee (IRC) on the incidence of gender-based violence (GBV) among Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Previous reports include The Shadow Pandemic: Gender-based violence among Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh (June 2020) and GBV Trends Among Rohingya Refugees in Cox’s Bazar: COVID-19 Update (January 2021). Using data collected from IRC’s Integrated Women’s Centres and integrated GBV-health programme sites across Cox’s Bazar, alongside evidence from interviews with IRC’s GBV case workers, this report offers two sets of findings. The first section provides the consolidated findings of IRC’s GBV screening data over a 24-month collection period, from 2019 – 2021, revealing the continuity of reported GBV rates in this time period. The second and third are the findings of both IRC GBV screening data and GBVIMS data from October 2020 – June 2021, showing the most recent trends in GBV reporting.

Engaging girls is important – to reduce their exposure to harm and to expand the vital role they can play in shaping their own lives and communities. This is the reason the International Rescue Committee brings together groups of girls to explore their power and potential and cultivate essential skills.

To respond to the specific needs of adolescent girls in humanitarian settings and to address the gap in evidence of what works to promote the health, safety and empowerment of adolescent girls, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has invested in a robust adolescent girl programming and research agenda. As part of this effort, the IRC partnered with Columbia University over a three year period (2014–2017) to develop, implement and evaluate the Creating Opportunities through Mentoring, Parental Involvement and Safe Spaces (COMPASS) program, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). COMPASS was implemented with refugees living in camps on the Sudan/Ethiopia border, conflict-affected communities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and displaced populations in north-west Pakistan.