II. Bangladesh’s Bhasan Char “Solution”
The Bangladesh government has invested up to US$300 million to develop infrastructure
for refugee relocation on Bhasan Char. 50 The immense political and financial investment
has likely solidified official support for the project, despite serious concerns raised by
donors, the United Nations, humanitarian agencies, and nongovernmental organizations. 51
As recently as 1999, Bhasan Char did not even exist. Formed by river silt, the island has
been unstable with a rapidly shifting shoreline for the past 20 years. 52 About 30 kilometers
off the coast, the island is at least a three-hour boat-ride from Chairman Ghat—the closest
port on the mainland—and about five hours by boat from Chittagong. In rough seas, it is
inaccessible by boat, and in high winds or heavy rain, inaccessible by helicopter. The
island has no airstrip for fixed-wing planes and no regular telecommunications
infrastructure, meaning in rough weather the island is frequently cut off from the rest of
the world. 53
Bhasan Char’s location in the Bay of Bengal makes it particularly vulnerable to deadly
cyclones. According to a comprehensive academic study of storm surges worldwide, of the
world’s 45 storms since 1930 with surges higher than five meters, 27 (60 percent) have
occurred in the Bay of Bengal. 54 The consequences have been deadly. The study found that
“the deadliest storm surges in world history have consistently occurred in the Bay of
50 “Bangladesh is moving Rohingyas to a remote island,” Economist, December 10, 2020,
https://www.economist.com/asia/2020/12/12/bangladesh-is-moving-rohingyas-to-a-remote-island (accessed April 28,
2021).
51 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Bangladesh, “Press Release on Vashanchar,” December 30, 2020,
https://mofa.gov.bd/site/press_release/b4c48065-f1ba-466c-8d8f-f3dc9b324c5c (accessed April 28, 2021).
52 “A Remote Home for the Rohingya,” Reuters, December 31, 2018, http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/MYANMARROHINGYA/010060Z21XP/index.html (accessed April 15, 2021).
53 A “char,” a Bangla word used to describe silt or sand islands formed by sediments from currents from Bangladesh’s rivers,
are widely known to be transitory geographical formations, which after forming can shift location or shape, or even later
disappear. In one well known case, a char appeared off the coast of India and Bangladesh in 1970 after a major cyclone;
each country claimed it as their territory, which led to arbitration at a court in the Hague. Shifting currents, due to gradually
rising sea levels, then caused the island to disappear around 2010. See “Rising Sea Levels Settle Border Dispute,” Sydney
Morning Herald, March 25, 2010, https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/rising-sea-level-settles-borderdispute-20100324-qwum.html (accessed May 13, 2021).
54 Hal F. Needham, Barry D. Keim, David Sathiaraj, “A review of tropical cyclone‐generated storm surges: Global data sources,
observations, and impacts,” Reviews of Geophysics, vol. 53, iss. 2 (2015) accessed April 28, 2021, doi:
10.1002/2014RG000477.
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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | JUNE 2021