The Hidden Rohingya Water Crisis: What's Happening in Bangladesh

In parts of the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, the water runs an hour at a time, only four days a week. Whatever a family carries home in that hour needs to cover drinking, cooking, wudu, bathing, and cleaning until the tap opens again.

The Rohingya water crisis is usually described as a shortage of groundwater, and the ground is part of it. The shallow aquifer beneath the camps gives up nearly 4 million gallons a day, and in places the water table has dropped 16 to 30 feet, according to a February 2026 report from Rohingyatographer. But the reason a tap stops running is more often a broken pump that hasn’t been fixed. What’s happening in Bangladesh’s refugee camps is a maintenance crisis as much as a water one.

Bangladesh opened its border to Rohingya refugees in 2017 and has hosted them since. About 1.2 million Rohingya refugees are living in the country – more than 1.16 million in 33 camps across roughly 9 square miles of hillside in Cox’s Bazar, according to the UN Refugee Agency. It’s the largest refugee settlement in the world.

Where Does The Water Come From?

By March 2018, aid organizations had installed more than 6,000 water points and 50,000 emergency latrines, according to a 2025 assessment by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Much of it went in without planning for where, solving the immediate problem but creating two that lasted: contaminated water and heavy extraction from one shallow layer.

In 2019, the WASH sector in Cox’s Bazar, with Oxfam and UNHCR, adopted a water master plan and began building chlorinated piped networks and plants to treat fecal sludge. Some camps drink from those pipes now. The rest still draw from tube wells.

Much of the network runs on solar power. Panels drive pumps that lift groundwater into raised tanks, where it is chlorinated before gravity carries it to tap stands across the block.

The challenges start when nothing gets replaced. A dried-out tube well is drilled again, a broken pump waits for a spare part, and new pipework goes in over the original wells rather than instead of them. Nine years in, planning documents describe the camps as protracted, and the response is funded a year at a time. An annual budget cycle pays for fixes far more readily than for rebuilds. It is a system kept alive one season at a time.

Drivers Of The Crisis

The most immediate problem is maintenance. The 2025 MSF assessment found that 44% of households had water continuously available in the week before the survey, essentially unchanged since 2018. Researchers concluded that poor operation and maintenance, not over-extraction, is the main cause of disruptions.

Money decides whether maintenance happens. UNHCR reported in July 2025 that a program paying refugees to repair walkways and stabilize slopes had been cut back by shortages in global funding. Around 5,500 refugees completed more than 500 maintenance projects in the first half of 2024. A year later, that figure had fallen by nearly two-thirds.

The 2026 appeal continued the trend. The UN and its partners requested $710.5 million for the Rohingya response, 26% below the 2025 request, with $61.2 million allocated to water, sanitation, and hygiene.

That smaller plan has to cover more people. Some 150,000 Rohingya have arrived from Myanmar since early 2024. Six of 15 key WASH indicators have deteriorated since 2022.

Contamination And The Aquifer Beneath The Camps

Contamination is the older problem. Many early water points were installed near latrines on the same slope. A 2019 study in Gut Pathogens found fecal bacteria contamination in 28% of water sampled at the source and 74% sampled inside homes. Water that leaves the tap clean does not always arrive clean.

Beneath the camps and nearby Bangladeshi villages is an aquifer, the shared underground water supply. In some places the water level has fallen 16 to 30 feet, enough to shut down a tube well permanently. For now, MSF’s monitoring suggests the aquifer is refilling at about the same rate people are using it. But the lower water level leaves little room for droughts, more demand, or broken equipment, and the system also has no funded maintenance plan.

Challenges Inside The Camps

As the dry season began in February 2026, Rohingya reporters surveyed refugees through three community WhatsApp networks and published the results through Rohingyatographer. Of 387 verified respondents, nearly half said the water system where they lived was failing at least half the people around them, and 12.4% reported near-total failure.

Households buy what the taps do not supply, for as much as 500 taka a month, roughly $4 USD, in a population that can’t work. On the hilltops, residents reported two or three pots a day. Elsewhere, it was four pitchers for an entire household.

International humanitarian guidelines recommend a minimum of 4 gallons per person a day in an emergency. Four pitchers for a family falls well short of that. When supply is rationed, washing is the first use to go, which is how disease travels quickly through a settlement as packed as Cox’s Bazar.

July 2026 Monsoon Flooding

In the first half of July 2026, monsoon rains caused flash floods and landslides across 10 districts of Bangladesh. More than 1.1 million people were affected and more than 50 were killed. The refugee camps were among the hardest-hit areas.

From July 5 to 14, the camps recorded 556 weather-related incidents. Fifteen refugees died and 13,055 people were displaced.

The storms damaged 72 water points, 458 latrines, 4,883 shelters, and 1,087 retaining walls. Many of the blocks that lost water points in July had already faced rationing in February. The floodwaters receded by the end of July, but the damage remained.

Our Work In Bangladesh

Our work in Bangladesh begins with water, a priority deeply rooted in Islamic tradition. In a well-known hadith, Sa’d ibn ‘Ubadah (RA) asked what form of voluntary charity he could give in his late mother’s name. The Prophet (PBUH) told him that water was best, so Sa’d (RA) dug a well in her name (Sunan Abi Dawud 1681).

We have been working in the Rohingya camps since the first year people arrived, when our water and sanitation team included women who had just fled. Repairing what is already built brings a block back after a July like this one. Drilling deeper, past the layer that has been drained, keeps the same tube well from failing again next February.

Our Rohingya Refugees Water Fund covers repairs, especially in Jamtoli camp. The fund is built to reach 4,460 people in the camp and the host community beside it: 140 latrines repaired and cleaned plus six tube wells and 12 toilets. Those clean-up jobs provide 300 people with paid community work.

Our program also funds 80 meetings on hygiene and clean water as well as 60 girls on menstrual health, because a working tap only stops disease if people know how to carry and store what comes out of it. Across our wider water program, more than 350,000 people gained access to clean water through our wells in 2025.

A working tap is the difference between a family drinking, washing, and praying with clean water, and a family stretching four pitchers across a day in the heat. That’s the part of this crisis your donation can change. A broken pump needs a part, a crew, and the means to financially cover both.

Through our Rohingya Refugees Water Fund, $135 covers clean water, sanitation, and improved hygiene for 10 refugees. What reaches a family next is what you can help repair.

Sources
Hadith: Sunan Abi Dawud 1681 — water named the best sadaqah for the deceased.
UNHCR, June 2026 — Rohingya population in Bangladesh.
Al Jazeera / Norwegian Refugee Council — world’s largest refugee settlement; 33 camps, 9 square miles.
UN in Bangladesh / Prothom Alo, May 20, 2026 — 2026 Joint Response Plan appeal.
Dhaka Tribune, May 20, 2026 — 150,000 new arrivals since early 2024.
Joint Response Plan 2025–26 — WASH indicators deteriorated since 2022.
Rohingyatographer, Feb. 13, 2026 — camp water survey.
Butt et al., BMC Health Services Research, June 9, 2025 (MSF) — maintenance as principal cause.
Mahmud et al., Gut Pathogens, 2019 — contamination at source and point of use.
Institute of Water Modelling / WASH Sector Cox’s Bazar — 2019 Water Master Plan.
Sphere Handbook, Water Supply Standard 2.1 — emergency minimum per person per day.
Norwegian Refugee Council, July 17, 2026 — July flood toll and camp damage.
UNHCR, July 2025 — cuts to the community maintenance program.
Human Rights Watch, July 13, 2026 — WASH engineer on funding cuts.

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