Toyoba Begum gazes down at her sleeping two-day-old daughter, finally allowing herself a moment of relief. Lying in a crowded hospital ward, the fourth-time mother knows all too well the perils of bringing new life into the world here in the sprawling Rohingya refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Just three years ago, Begum endured an agonizing six-day labor that ended with a stillborn child—a tragedy that still haunts her.
Begum’s story is all too common in this congested settlement, now home to around one million ethnic Rohingya who fled persecution in neighboring Myanmar. In some areas of the camps, maternal mortality rates soar to 44% above the Bangladesh average, a grim testament to the challenges these women face. While a handful of well-run health centers provide a lifeline, far too many mothers are slipping through the cracks.
A Dangerous Journey to Motherhood
For expectant Rohingya women, the path to a healthy delivery is riddled with obstacles at every turn:
- Threadbare healthcare: With only a few fully-equipped hospitals like Friendship serving a population of one million, many women have no choice but to give birth in ill-equipped local clinics or at home without skilled care.
- Rampant violence: The constant threat of kidnapping, trafficking, and gang brutality makes venturing out to seek medical help a risky endeavor, especially at night when labor often begins.
- Entrenched traditions: Many Rohingya husbands insist their wives deliver at home as per custom, even when complications arise. Precious time is lost in transit to far-off facilities.
“Somebody might just pick the baby up and go and sell it in another camp. After delivery and after raising the child, when somebody kidnaps or takes them away, then it is very painful.”
– Toyoba Begum, mother of a newborn
Midwives on the Front Lines
Amid the crisis, a cadre of dedicated midwives are fighting to turn the tide. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) supports around 500 midwives to bolster maternal care across the camps. Working exhausting shifts in sweltering, cramped clinics, these women save lives every single day.
“In this Rohingya or humanitarian context there is always a need for midwives,” explains 24-year-old Sumana Akter during a short break between deliveries at Friendship Hospital. In a single shift, she and her small team will usher a dozen new babies into the world, handling everything from emergency C-sections to postpartum hemorrhages with calm professionalism.
But even these heroic efforts are not always enough. At a primary health center in Camp 4, three women died from childbirth complications in November alone. “It was not a nice feeling because everybody came in active labor, so it’s not that you can prioritize this over this,” Akter says of a recent night when she had six patients crowding three beds, all in urgent need. “It’s unfortunate that they have to wait.”
A Stateless Generation Born into Turmoil
For the infants who survive these harrowing first days, an uncertain future awaits. Born stateless in a foreign land, most have known nothing but the confines of the densely packed camps their entire lives. Their parents fled Myanmar in 2017 when the military launched a brutal campaign of violence against the Rohingya minority. Now, with no path to citizenship in Bangladesh or safe return to their homeland, they are suspended in a permanent state of limbo.
In this unsettled environment, insecurity and desperation have given rise to a sinister criminal underbelly. Trafficking rings target the camps’ most vulnerable, including newborn babies to sell for profit. With few opportunities for work or education, teens are easily swept into gangs and violence. It is a treacherous landscape for a child to navigate.
And so it is against great odds that Rohingya mothers like Begum pour their love and hope into these innocent new lives, come what may. As she prepares to carry her precious daughter out of the hospital and back to the family’s makeshift shelter, Begum allows herself to dream of a brighter tomorrow. In a place filled with so much pain, these newborns represent the promise of a new beginning, however tenuous it may be. For now, that flicker of promise is enough.
