# **2. Context and objective of the survey**

In late August 2017, a large number of Rohingya displaced arrived in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh, fleeing violence from Myanmar. Within a period of four months, some 724,000<sup>2</sup> newly arrived persons joined other Rohingya who had fled earlier waves of violence. By the end of 2018, nearly 2,000 campsites in the Cox’s Bazar sub-districts of Teknaf and Ukhia hosted around 912,000 Rohingya.

Compared to other recent forced displaced movements, the 2017 Rohingya influx was unique in its scale and speed. More than 80 percent of all displaced Rohingya who are now in Cox’s Bazar arrived within a fourmonth period.<sup>3</sup> The 2017 wave was also unprecedented in its size relative to the host population. The arriving Rohingya increased the total population of the Cox’s Bazar district by 32 percent and the population of Ukhia and Teknaf sub-districts by 154 percent.<sup>4</sup> Today, Rohingya displaced account for as many as 4 out of 5 inhabitants in Ukhia and 4 out of 10 in Teknaf.<sup>5</sup> The concentration of Rohingya displaced in Cox’s Bazar is the densest known in the world, reaching 11.7 square meters per person.<sup>6</sup> This significant population movement into areas that were already poor and vulnerable before the influx<sup>7</sup> made it urgent to create an evidence base for policies to benefit Rohingya and host communities in Cox’s Bazar. For the displaced, there was interest in understanding and tracking how key welfare indicators (such as food security, labor market engagement, and mobility) evolved as the crisis unfolded into the medium and long terms. For hosts, the large population influx was expected to have significant and heterogeneous impacts on multiple dimensions of welfare. However, evidence on this front was very limited due to lack of representative data after the influx.

The Cox’s Bazar Panel Survey (CBPS) was designed in 2018 to produce a representative longitudinal survey to track key socio-economic and health indicators of Rohingya and the host Bangladeshi population in Cox’s Bazar district.<sup>8</sup> The survey’s main objective was to build an evidence base on the medium- and long-term impact of the Rohingya crisis on economic and social conditions among Rohingya and hosts. Due to the localized nature of the shock in the sub-districts of Ukhia and Teknaf, it was important to compare the

> 2 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) refugee population factsheet (as of 15 July 2019) <u>http://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/myanmar_refugees.</u>

> 3 Staff calculation based on UNHCR refugee population factsheet (as of 15 July 2019).

> 4 Staff calculation based on UNHCR refugee population factsheet (as of 15 July 2019) and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) population census 2011.

> 5 Figures account for the total population of displaced Rohingya persons reported by the UNHCR (new and old arrivals).

> 6 This is the density reported for Camp 3 in Ukhia in the UNHCR assessment “Settlement and protection profiling of all camps Ukhia/Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Round 5, July 2019.”

> 7 Host households in Cox’s Bazar live in largely rural areas of the district, where consumption poverty is both high and significantly worse than the national average of 24.5 percent. Poverty rates outside the district capital of Cox’s Bazar Sadar are higher than both the national and district averages, with the primary hosting subdistricts of Teknaf and Ukhia reporting small-area poverty estimates of 30 percent and 40 percent respectively. In 2016, only 55 percent of adults over 18 in Cox’s Bazar reported being literate. In addition, only half of all households reported access to electricity, and less than 3 percent reported access to piped water. According to the 2011 census, infrastructure and social indicators are also significantly worse outside the district capital and notably in the primary hosting sub-districts.

> 8 The CBPS is a partnership between the Yale Macmillan Center Program on Refugees, Forced Displacement, and Humanitarian Responses (Yale Macmillan PRFDHR), the Gender & Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) program, and the Poverty and Equity Global Practice (GPVDR) of the World Bank.

3