Over the past 10 days UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has received reports of some 30 improvised rafts arriving from Myanmar, carrying more than a thousand people. Unable to pay for the crossing, refugees are building rafts from whatever material they can get their hands on – mostly bamboo poles and empty jerry cans tied together with rope and covered with plastic sheets. More than 200 Rohingya refugees are known to have drowned in shipwrecks and boat incidents since the start of the crisis on 25 August.

UNHCR and partners built 1,573 latrines and 200 tube wells. This represents over 78,000 who have access to latrines and 100,000 who have access to water. UNHCR continues to lead the coordination among WASH actors at the field level in both Kutupalong (including in the extension site) and Nayapara, providing technical guidance and support to improve compliance with WASH standards.

UNHCR has just completed the first phase of Rohingya refugee family counting, where more than half a million refugees from Myanmar have so far been counted. Going from shelter to shelter, more than 100 UNHCR-hired enumerators have so far gathered data on more than 120,000 families. In the innovative and revealing family counting exercise, UNHCR teams found that one-third of the families are vulnerable.