Fire hits Cox's Bazar Rohingya camp in Bangladesh

The fire fits a repeated pattern rather than a one-off disaster. The Norwegian Refugee Council said a January 2026 fire in Camp 16 destroyed 335 shelters and damaged water, sanitation and learning facilities. Earlier major fires hit Cox's Bazar in January 2022 and March 2023, while the March 22, 2021 Balukhali blaze became a reference point for the danger of tightly packed bamboo-and-tarpaulin shelters. A 2023 fire-modelling study by Md. Fahad Hossain Mishu, Rafia Rizwana Rahim and Md. Ashiqur Rahman found that fuel arrangement, bamboo construction and short separation distances strongly affect fire spread in Rohingya camp shelters.

The broader issue is the unresolved Myanmar crisis. Conflict in Rakhine State, the absence of secure return conditions and the Rohingya's statelessness keep Bangladesh hosting a large refugee population with limited durable solutions. For the EU, the camp fire is a small but visible symptom of a wider international failure to convert humanitarian maintenance into political resolution.

The story is timely because a June 12 video lead showed a new fire inside the Cox's Bazar camp complex, reviving concerns that earlier major fires and donor warnings have not translated into enough safer shelter capacity.