Don’t let coronavirus destroy refugee camps

A peculiar fact about the coronavirus catastrophe so far is that the world’s poorest have largely been spared the worst. Of the 10 countries with the most deaths to date, nearly all are among the wealthiest. But if the virus has overwhelmed places with modern hospitals and world-class medical infrastructure — as anyone who’s been in New York or Milan recently can attest — it could do still more catastrophic damage in places where the healthcare system is fragile to start with. Perhaps nowhere is the risk greater than in the world’s refugee camps.
Some 2.6 million refugees live in more than 100 such camps worldwide. Although that’s just a small fraction of the refugee population, which totals some 26 million, people in camps face outsized risks during a
pandemic. Like cruise ships, which have been notorious coronavirus hotbeds, refugee camps are generally overcrowded. (In many of them, the population density far outstrips that of Manhattan in New York City.) Unlike cruise ships, they often lack basic sanitary infrastructure — several hundred people, for instance, might rely on just one water source. Meanwhile, the shortages of personal protective equipment (the now infamous PPE) that have bedeviled the rich world are far worse in camps, and advanced care is “scarce to nonexistent,” according to the advocacy group Refugees International. Some countries have dealt with coronavirus by putting camps under lockdown, making medical care even further out of reach.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that few of the world’s camps are yet dealing with contagion on the scale of the Diamond Princess (where 17% onboard became infected), or Ohio’s Marion Correctional Institution (where, horribly, more than 80% of inmates are sick). The world has time to prepare. And it must — for humanitarian reasons, but also because of self-interest. Coronavirus outbreaks in camps would sow instability and turmoil in host countries, disrupt the process of refugee resettlement and set economic development back by decades. They could also spread the virus to larger national populations. As Singapore has shown, even the most advanced health-care systems can buckle if they let noncitizens fall through the cracks.
Fortunately, the world can take action during this crisis — by helping refugees keep their distance, stay healthy before the virus strikes and stay informed.
Traditional social distancing may be impossible in camps, as workers and refugees alike have noted, but some solutions are still at hand. Most drastically, states could “evacuate” their overcrowded refugee facilities, as Doctors Without Borders and others have urged Greece to do. While that’s unlikely to happen on a broad scale, Greece has begun transferring unaccompanied children to Germany and Luxembourg — part of a larger EU initiative ­— and has pledged to relocate some 2,400 of the most vulnerable refugees.
Unfortunately, most camps are in places that lack the resources of the European Union, or even Greece. Where states are unable or unwilling to act, the rest of the world must. Rich countries that lack the political will to accept new refugees could, at the very least, boost funding to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which is building quarantine and isolation units in camps. The UN and NGOs are also taking the lead in relieving congestion — doing things like delivering soap door to door via donkey, as is happening in camps in eastern Sudan.
People who don’t have their food, water and basic sanitary needs met are also vulnerable to all sorts of illnesses, including Covid-19. So meeting those basic needs is a crucial preventative measure. The UNHCR, to its credit, has prioritised improving water and hygiene infrastructure in camps, as have many NGOs. Unfortunately, due to a coronavirus-related funding shortfall, the World Food Program has reportedly cut food rations for refugees in Uganda by 30%. Rations are hardly luxurious to start with, so harsh cuts could lead to malnutrition — leaving refugees with weakened immune systems at the worst possible time.
Countries struggling with their own Covid-19 crises will be tempted to cut funding to agencies and NGOs that provide basic services to refugees. That’s a terrible idea. The global economy may not be flush right now, but investing in nutrition and sanitation would prevent even costlier global catastrophes in the future. And closing their hospitals to refugees would likewise be misguided: Shutting out non-citizens can have disastrous consequences for public health. If wealthy countries care about their own self-interest, they should be inclusive as well as break with their woeful tradition of skimping on aid during recessions. Because as we all know, the coronavirus respects no borders.
One other critical thing the world can do is improve communications and connectivity in refugee camps. Bangladesh offers a case study in what not to do. Home to the world’s largest complex of refugee camps, Bangladesh hosts some 900,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. Since last autumn, it has banned the internet in camps and restricted mobile-phone access to refugees. As a result, misinformation about what residents call the “moronavirus,” or “dying virus” in Rohingya, is rampant.

—Bloomberg

Tracy Walsh is an editor for Bloomberg Opinion. She was an
editor at the Dish and Euromoney
Institutional Investor