orders and instructing the concerned government authority to take steps for the
rehabilitation of those who live in the camps and have a national identity card. Despite
this High Court verdict, on May 2017 Dhaka North City Corporation evicted Kashmiri
Mohallah Camp in Section-11 Mirpur and in August 2017 they evicted two more camps
in Pallabi, Mirpur. Now the camp residents are living under the open sky.
Right to Health
31. Most Bihari camps are small with a large population. Every hut is 8 to 10 feet in camp
and 8 to 10 family members are surviving within that hut. During the rainy session camps
become flooded, which makes basic activities such as sleeping and cooking a challenge.
There is no privacy between parents and other family members. Every day they are living
with the threat of eviction and lack of adequate electricity supply or water facilities.
32. Lack of access to water and poor sanitation are common phenomenons in every camp
across the country. For an example, Geneva camp, the largest camp among the 116
camps, is located in Dhaka with an area of 123000 square feet area populated by around
30000 people. The number of public toilets in Geneva Camp is 265 and most of them are
dirty and have no doors. On average each toilet is used by 100 people, but nearly 50%
are out of order, so the average number of people using each toilet is closer to 200. A
growing trend in Geneva Camp is for families to build their own private toilets, but due to
the cramped living conditions few have the space inside their homes.
33. Likewise, families prefer to have their own water pumps due to the long lines and overuse
of public ones, yet because of the same space constraints few have had the ability to do
so. As for the public water pumps, there is at least one in each sector of Geneva Camp
with some of the larger sectors having two. The public pumps are not only used for water
collection but also for bathing and clothes washing, which adds to congestion. Drinking
water is carried from the pumps to individual homes in metal or plastic buckets and then
stored in large drums near the stove or under the bed. The water gathered from the
public taps in each sector is free of charge. Most of the camps in Dhaka do not have any
gas connection, which makes the boiling of drinking water impractical, as the kerosene
needed to boil water is expensive. Unclean water infects children with water-borne
diseases; urinary tract infections affect women and girls. The lack of access to clean
water makes it difficult for the people to maintain proper hygiene. Waste water created
while cooking is typically dumped directly into the alleyways or into the infrequent aboveground drains, while solid-food waste is disposed of in intermittently available trash bins
or in informal piles. All of these factors lead to poor levels of health within the Urduspeaking community.
Right to Education
34. Although no formal restriction prevents access to government schools, camp addresses
do cause problems for ‘Bihari’ children seeking admission. Although this appears to be
changing, rules vary between institutions, and access is dependent on the attitudes of
individuals in charge. More significantly, rampant discrimination within mainstream
society as a whole, and continued bullying on the part of teachers and classmates alike
continues to discourage attendance. Together with the lack of resources for school fees
or materials, educational facilities thus remain inaccessible to the majority. There is no
quota for the Bihari for education and public jobs like exist for other minorities and
indigenous peoples in Bangladesh.
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